Black Jack: Cyclone
by Cascade Fantasy
Summary: When Black Jack and Pinoko leave for a few days, a cyclone unexpectedly hits their hometown and leaves everything destroyed-all except their own house. Now in the aftermath of the disaster, it will be up to Yukia and Kiriko to save the townspeople from various medical emergencies. Can Yukia rise to the challenge?
1. Prologue

_ Hello, readers! Thanks for taking the time to read this lil' sequel (even though its been a SUPER long time since the last one's been published.) I'm really excited for people to be reading this final story in the Black Jack Trilogy. _

_Well, this is technically a Black Jack fic, but there are a bunch of new original characters that I've thrown into the mix. This is because the story focuses primarily on Yukia. I'm sorry if that does upset people, but the story will sort of explain why it's mostly about him... I promise that this is a great story that will deliver on the long wait! Let me know what you think by leaving a review! _

**Prologue **

The morbid surprise came on a rainy Sunday morning, before breakfast, when the morning animes were being broadcast on the television. Yukia had sat in front of the television, his legs folded pretzel style, focused on the show but pondering as to why his mother and father hadn't exited from their bedroom yet. His uncle Kiriko already sat at the kitchen table (as he ate with them most mornings) with his disheveled white hair pushed back behind his shoulders. He raised a coffee cup to his lips and slurped from it, eying the clock every once in a while.

Then Yukia heard a door open, and he quickly switched off the TV and whipped around to see his parents exit. Their house slippers shuffled against the floorboards of their home as they entered the main area. Black Jack, who was his father, had half of his face at an unusually pale hue which contrasted sharply with his scar and the darker half of his face. His mother, Pinoko, nervously bit her lip and wrung her hands. She was still dressed in her peach colored robe, which was unorthodox, as most mornings she was already dressed and ready for the day.

Kiriko raised his head and arched a brow. "So, you finally figured it out, huh?"

Pinoko and Black Jack awkwardly separated from each other, and Pinoko headed into the kitchen to prepare breakfast. Yukia swallowed, a bit nervous. This wasn't good.

Black Jack sat down at the table and stared out the window, past the cliff and out towards the sea. The rain smeared the image and dragged it down to the edges. He sighed heavily and placed a fist under his chin, propping himself up.

"I've been noticing it for a while now," Kiriko commented freely, gulping down the rest of his mug. "She's been acting strange, lately. Just like that time…"

Black Jack cast Kiriko a furious look, and Kiriko smirked and tilted his body away from Black Jack, avoiding eye contact. Yukia gazed at his father. He was never usually a testy man—unemotional at times, yes. But touchy and on edge? Only at the worst of times, like during an operation, or when he had been in an argument.

"Except it's not like that time," Black Jack protested sternly, his eyes still wide and reprimanding Kiriko. "Because there are twins."

"Twins!?" Kiriko and Yukia both shouted in amazement, and from the kitchen, a pan clattered to the floor.

"Pinoko?" Black Jack glanced over his shoulder and concernedly looked into the kitchen.

Pinoko glanced over at her husband and nervously smiled, wiping her hands on her apron. Her eyes glittered with tears, but she refused to allow herself to cry.

"I'm fine, chenchei," she murmured, bending over to pick up the pan. She switched on the stove and faced her back to them.

"Twins," Kiriko echoed. "Twins. How did that happen? I mean, honestly, do you _not _understand the concept of birth control?"

"She had strep throat a few months ago. She had to be on antibiotics for that. I didn't even consider…"

Kiriko grinned slightly, and Black Jack once again glared.

"You think this is funny?" he hissed.

"Well, in a strange sense, yes. She's a twin herself isn't she? A twin having twins. Imagine if those were two baby girls as well!"

"Mama is pregnant?" Yukia cried out, the truth slapping the air so loudly that it practically jolted them.

Black Jack sighed heavily. "Yes… for now."

Yukia, being too little to understand this, frowned and stared in confusion at his father. Pinoko then exited the kitchen, and set down a hot frying pan that had scrambled eggs already prepared.

"The miso soup is boiling," she stated quietly, and then went back into the kitchen.

Obediently Yukia set the table, and his father served him some of the eggs. Black Jack made a point of not serving Kiriko, who showed a look of distaste when he didn't. Pinoko then entered, carrying a heavy pot.

Black Jack stood up. "Let me carry that for you."

"No," she said, shaking her head, "I can do it myself."

She set it down on the table and ladled it out into the bowls. She then sat down beside Black Jack. Her quivering lip was visible to the table.

"I'm going to stay pregnant."

Kiriko and Black Jack looked at her in pure alarm. She then burst into tears, covering her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking.

"Yukia, take your breakfast and go to your room," Black Jack ordered sternly, turning his attention to his distressed wife.

Yukia immediately did as he was told, though he felt a pang in his heart as he caught one final glance at his mother, hunched over and weeping.

"Pinoko," Black Jack whispered, rubbing his wife's shoulder soothingly. "Pinoko, we talked about this. Remember the last time? You almost died."

"But I…!" she sobbed. "I just can't! I can't… I can't have an abortion, Black Jack. I still see her face in my mind and I…" she hiccupped through her tears. "And I can't do that again!"

"Pinoko, that's ridiculous," Black Jack shot back sternly. "There are _two _of them. Two of them, when you couldn't even carry one. They'll kill you. And we still have our son." He wiped away some of her tears. "I know you want to let them live. But is it worth the cost of your life? Is it worth it that they grow up without their mother?"

"Chenchei," she whispered. "Please. Isn't there some chance? Some way that I could survive with them? I mean, if there's no other way, then…"

He sighed heavily and hung his head. He stroked his face with one hand. Kiriko, who had been sitting there witnessing this, then piped up.

"There are ways," he suggested to Pinoko, diverting her attention from her husband. "Since we recognized this early. You aren't too far along, so we can prepare some precautions."

"Kiriko, even then… We'd be giving her drugs, Kiriko. Given how fragile Pinoko's body is, we don't know how fragile these babies will be. They could end up with serious disorders or defects. This could kill them."

"Yes, it could," Kiriko said hotly, "but at least then we will have tried."

Black Jack gritted his teeth, conflicted. Though the children that Pinoko carried were his, he couldn't see the reason to keep them. Not when it could cost Pinoko her life, and abandon him with the possible future of raising three children, including the oldest which would still be very young. To him, an abortion wasn't necessarily cruel: it just made common sense. But then on the other hand, he respected that it was Pinoko's decision—it wouldn't provide well for their marriage if he was to force her into it.

"Please, chenchei," he heard her quiet, soothing plea. "I know it's a lot to ask, but please."

Staring at her tearstained face, he recalled the vows he had made those years ago as he stood at the altar with her. Above everything else, he had to help her. He had to support her, with whatever decision that she chose to make.

"You need to listen to me," he told her firmly. "And we can get through this."

She smiled warmly and fell into his arms. Kiriko coughed and then excused himself from the table and headed into the kitchen. Stroking her auburn hair, Black Jack placed his chin on her head, and wondered what the hell he had just gotten himself into.

For most families, the time when a mother is pregnant is usually happy, and has little conflictions—at least, that's what Yukia could get from television. But television was so very different from his reality. Most days seemed to carry an ominous gloom that hung over them. Each day was relatively busy, and once every week, Black Jack and Kiriko both performed checkups on Pinoko, adjusting vitamin and supplement intakes among determining other important things. Pinoko was also confined to the bed in her room or the living room sofa, as Black Jack had sternly instructed her not to move. She could not perform tasks such as doing the laundry, or washing windows, for he feared that she would strain herself. She was allowed to lightly sweep, cook or wash dishes, but that was as much mobility as she was granted. When lying on a comfortable surface, she would always have a blanket pulled halfway up her body, tucked lovingly and cautiously around it.

There were some definite happy moments that Yukia was able to witness. The first time he had heard the twins' heartbeats. His mother had been in the examination room of their house and his father had his stethoscope pressed against her stomach. And for once, they were both smiling.

"No problems that I can hear," Black Jack told his wife, removing his stethoscope and pulling the knobs from his ears. "They're both developing very well."

"Thank goodness," Pinoko said with a happy whisper, placing her hand on her stomach. She turned to Yukia. "Yukia, do you want to hear them?"

Black Jack fixated the stethoscope on Yukia, and in little to no time, Yukia could hear them. Two separate heartbeats that were almost in perfect sync. He was astounded.

"That's so cool," he commented, withdrawing.

Black Jack ruffled his son's hair. "And they're plenty healthy, too, from what I can tell."

"That is good," Yukia said, beaming. "That is very good."

His mother embraced him, and he laughed a little. That was when Yukia, who had been a bit disheveled by this whole process, now finally felt content with the idea of being an older brother.

One night, Black Jack and Pinoko had gone to bed fairly late in the evening after watching a movie on a public channel. The double-wide crib where the babies were to sleep had been assembled and was set right by their bedside.

Black Jack had woken up almost instantaneously. The bed had been soaked, and Pinoko was breathing heavily.

"Chenchei," she said in a scared voice. "They're coming."

He got up carefully and quickly fetched towels and set water to boil. He then called up Kiriko and had him head over right away. Pinoko shouted from where she was in the bedroom.

"I-it really hurts," she said, gritting her teeth as he came to her side.

"You must already be close to fully dilated," he murmured in a concerned voice. "I can't give you an epidural."

This was bad. She was progressing faster than she normally should have.

"Then what are you going to do?" she asked desperately.

"Hold on," he told her, and examined her. He frowned as he did so. Yes, he had been right—she was almost fully dilated, but there was something strange…

"They're in breech position," he told her. "I'm going to have to perform a C-section."

"Are they going to be okay?"

"The sooner Kiriko gets here, the better," Black Jack responded, rushing to go and change into his scrubs.

He quickly disinfected and changed into his green scrubs as a sweaty, red faced Kiriko entered the room.

"Get changed," Black Jack told him. "I've got to get Pinoko to the OR. One of the babies is in breech position. We have to perform a C section."

"Got it."

They moved Pinoko into the OR, and Black Jack gave her general anesthesia and fixated an oxygen mask over her nose. Kiriko hung a curtain across her chest. They then performed the other necessary tasks: inserting a catheter and an IV. After double checking her blood pressure and heart rate, Black Jack moved to begin. He picked up his scalpel, rather shakily, and prepared to make an incision. He couldn't remove any of the plates that covered her organs—he was at least thankful for that.

"Stop shaking!" Kiriko barked at him angrily.

"Shut up," Black Jack retorted, and he began to make the cuts.

He made a horizontal and vertical cut in her abdominal wall, where her uterus laid behind. Kiriko handed him a few clamps as he pulled the area open. Inside, Black Jack could see the two small bodies, curled up beside each other. His eyes widened.

"Kiriko," he said, "one of them has their umbilical cord wrapped around their neck."

"Oh no."

An unusual panic rose up inside of Black Jack. He had to work fast. He quickly clamped the baby's cord, and then severed it. He held the limp child in his hands, and it stared up at him with wide, dead eyes. It wasn't crying, which meant that it was drowning in the fluids trapped inside its lungs.

"No, no, no," he whispered, staring at its face.

"Here!" Kiriko shouldered him out of the way rather forcefully. "I'm going to get this other one out. You help that one!"

Black Jack rushed. He quickly grabbed a few towels and did one of the simplest things that he could think of. He rubbed the baby vigorously and precariously between the two towels, trying to massage it in a way that would open its airway. Its rasping could scarcely be heard.

"Come on, don't do this to me…" he muttered as he then quickly attached an oxygen mask to its face. He set it in a small incubator and began to monitor its heart rate, which was steadily dropping. "Shit!"

The baby seemed to be turning its head towards him, its eyes wild with fear, and mouth open as it tried to suck in air. Its entire body fluttered, and then almost at once, it suddenly relaxed. Black Jack watched with sweat running down his forehead. And then suddenly, the beeping steadied itself.

_Beep-beep. Beep-beep. _

"Oh…" he sighed with relief, and now finally got a good look at the baby.

It was a girl. She started to cry into her oxygen mask, and after a minute or so, he removed it and allowed her to breathe in the air herself. He was fascinated by this small little creature. And then he heard the wailing of another baby behind him.

"A girl?" Kiriko called out to Black Jack.

"Yeah," Black Jack answered, smiling beneath his mask.

Kiriko seemed to be grinning as well. "A twin girl who had twin girls. What did I tell you?"

Suddenly a loud beeping rose up and they saw Pinoko's blood spilling forth from her body. Black Jack redirected his attention to his wife, who now very suddenly, was dying.

"The uterus isn't contracting," he said. "She's hemorrhaging. I need a stimulant!"

Kiriko handed Black Jack the syringe and he quickly injected it into Pinoko's body. He could see her face contorting in pain even though she wasn't awake. They both then waited, and tried to clean up the blood. Then Black Jack examined her again.

"BP steadying, as well as heart rate." Kiriko told him.

"The blood vessels are closing," he said. "She's going to be okay."

He then expertly sewed Pinoko back together, and set himself down in a chair with wobbly legs. Over in the corner, the babies were crying, just as they should be. He was amazed at how after all of that work; they were all going to be okay.

Meanwhile, Yukia sat outside. He yawned and rubbed his tired eyes as he fussed with the starchy-stiff collar of his pajama top. His face was illuminated by a small strip of light coming from inside his parents' bedroom. Suddenly the light was blackened out by the lanky tall figure of his uncle Kiriko. His long white hair looked as exhausted as he was.

"You can come in now," he said, opening the door a little further.

Cautiously Yukia entered the room, as if afraid to touch anything. He saw his beautiful mother lying in the bed, one of the babies on her chest. She looked extremely tired, and her eyes were sunken in from the blood loss. Her auburn hair was frayed and curled from her sweat. She smiled at Yukia as lovingly as she always did, and allowed him to approach her. She kissed his head and showed him the baby sleeping against her breast.

"Wow," Yukia whispered, and he instinctively set a hand on the baby's head, gently. It felt soft and fuzzy. She had long strands of auburn-black hair, such a strange color that it almost looked like a dark violet.

Yukia looked up and saw the worry circling in his mother's brown eyes. He then turned his attention over to the crib, where he saw his father with a few medical tools. He was hovering over a crib, and then Yukia realized that that was where the second baby was. And something was terribly wrong.

His father shone a flashlight into the baby's eyes and it cooed in response. Grimacing, Black Jack set his tools back in the black bag that he had on the dresser.

"Pinoko. It's no use. Haruna is blind."

Pinoko's voice became choked with tears. "But _why? _Why her? Why not Makoto too?"

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I didn't even notice when she had her eyes open…"

"Why did this happen?" Pinoko repeated.

"It's just a birth defect," he told her with a sigh.

"How do you know she's blind, Papa?"

Black Jack signaled Yukia over to him. Yukia peered down into his little sister's face, which was pinched up and angry. She was small, bald, and looked to have more than blindness amiss about her: she had small, delicate ears and strangely spindly fingers—her ring finger, on her left hand, was crooked, and her toes were crooked as well.

Then Yukia saw it. Her irises, which were brown, were a faint and almost milky color, and her pupils were a dark gray instead of a black. While they were honestly beautiful, Yukia then understood how his father could tell she was blind.

"You can't fix her, Papa?" Yukia asked as his father placed a hand on his shoulder.

"She needs two new corneas," Black Jack responded. "A simple fix when we can find a donor, but even if, she is much too little for such an extensive surgery."

Black Jack slipped one of his fingers into Haruna's hands, which she firmly squeezed back.

"It's not too much to worry about. She's got a good strong grip," he commented with a proud smile. "She's a fighter. She had to fight for her life, you know."

Yukia nodded. Black Jack set his gaze on his son.

"But I do expect you," he said softly, "to fight alongside them, as they are now your little sisters."

"Of course!" Yukia cried out softly, his chest swelling with pride. "For both of them, Papa, I'm going to fight for them for the rest of their lives!"


	2. Chapter One

_Hope people didn't wait too long for this to come back. But just in case some did, here's two new chapters! _

The childhood that Yukia shared with his sisters was a happy and an expectedly busy one as well. When they had become mobile, they created more problems for the four older members of their family. Haruna would successfully walk, but at times would run face first into an object. Makoto had a habit of placing herself in areas she was not welcome. She would push open doors to the examination or operating rooms and when Black Jack yelled at her, she would burst into tears.

Yukia played with them often: whether outside or inside. The older they got, the more fun they were to be around. The family also noticed that the older they got the more eerily similar characteristics the girls had to other members of the family. At seven, Makoto was practically the spitting image of her mother, which Black Jack proclaimed as odd, considering that Pinoko's face was artificial. But she had purple hair which framed her face like how her mother's had been when she was that size, and she had plump cheeks and adoring eyes. Haruna, on the other hand, was less cutesy, and looked more like Black Jack's mother. She had a gentle demeanor, but her blind eyes gave a sharp, serious edge to her appearance, and her long hair that draped down low gave her a strangely beautiful face, and slightly curled naturally like her grandmother's had. Both, however, were equally bright in mind and personality, although Haruna definitely looked more reserved than the ever so adventurous Makoto.

It was when the girls turned seven and were old enough to be left alone with Yukia and Kiriko that Black Jack and Pinoko decided to leave for Hokkaido for their second honeymoon. The announcement was sudden, and had come only a week before they planned to leave. So now, all the family members stood in the living room by the front door to see them off.

Yukia watched with a smile on his face as his flustered mother flittered back and forth through the house. Patiently, his two little sisters waited beside him as well, while his uncle and father sat at the kitchen table, both shaking their heads at Pinoko's flitting.

Suddenly his mother emerged from the hallway, one hand squeezing down her wide brimmed sun hat on her head. A determined smile set across her face.

"Alright, we'll be seeing you," Pinoko murmured, kissing each one of her children as she passed them by. "Be good girls; don't give your uncle or your brother trouble."

"We won't, Mama," Makoto promised, but the glint in her eyes protested otherwise.

Black Jack each gave the girls a kiss on the head and Yukia a brief nod of acknowledgement and then snatched up the two suitcases they carried. Pinoko fussed with Yukia's hair and then gave each of her children one more kiss and hug goodbye before they drove off in the black car down the road.

Yukia watched from the window until the dust following the car had settled, and it was only a speck in the distance. Overhead, the clouds were beginning to filter out the sunlight. The weather report had mentioned that there was going to be a large thunderstorm approaching. He hoped his parents wouldn't get caught up in the mess.

Turning around he saw that Haruna had returned to the couch where she had set her book. She lifted it up and started gliding her fingers across the bumps. A clatter came from the twins' room and Makoto burst out, carrying bug catching gear.

"I'm going to go catch cicadas!" she said, her gear clattering and making noise as she raced towards the door.

"No running," Yukia scolded, and she stopped as she opened the door.

_Cicadas? _He thought with a chuckle. _Good luck with that, Makoto. There aren't a lot of trees around where we live. _

"Tonight can we go and catch fireflies?"

"Mako, I don't think so. Look outside; it's not looking too good. It's going to rain, remember?"

Makoto rolled her eyes and then headed off down the path, waving her hand goodbye over her shoulder. When Yukia shut the door and looked around the kitchen, he saw that Kiriko had already disappeared to wherever he wanted to.

"Looks like it's just you and me for a while, Haruna."

Haruna smiled for a moment as she continued reading. She turned her head in the direction where her brother had spoken and asked,

"Yukia, is the storm… is it going to be a big one?"

"Well, yes. But not too big," he told her, coming over and sitting down in the armchair by the fireplace. "So don't worry."

"I don't like thunderstorms."

"I know you don't, Haruna. But it's going to be okay. Mind if I read with you?"

"Are you going to read that medical textbook Dad gave you?"

Yukia nodded.

Ever since he was a kid, Yukia had also been in training to be a doctor. Black Jack had been a strict but informative and effective teacher. He had given him practice dolls, which were filled with imitation organs, muscles, and bones, and had taught him about multiple operations. Yukia was also held responsible for stitching up and fixing whatever toys that the girls had broken, to the point where he could sew up a hole in a teddy bear without leaving a single trace of evidence, as he made his stitches so small and even. Before Yukia had been eleven, he was performing small operations on various injured strays that had passed by their home. Some had lived, and some had died, but all in all, Yukia had learned, and his father's instruction had made him want to be a doctor.

Yukia sat down to begin reading and Haruna snuggled up close to him, leaning against one of his arms as he tried to relax and absorb the information. A lot of it was complex, but Yukia had also been taught in chemistry here and there. He knew what elements were in the body, and what elements shouldn't go in the body; and he knew how much it took of each element to provide homeostasis.

After a few hours had passed that he had spent reading, Yukia got up and headed into the kitchen. He checked the clock that was positioned over the window and noticed that it was almost time for dinner. Beneath the window, the breakfast dishes were still piled up in the sink. Yukia turned on the water and put a handful of dish soap into his palm and started to massage away the dirt that had accumulated on the dishes. Outside, threatening clouds were rolling in. He saw his little sister Makoto dance across the grass outside.

Yukia pushed open the window and called out to her.

'Mako!" he yelled at her. "It's gonna start storming pretty soon."

"It's not raining!" she protested huffily, crossing her arms.

Just then thunder crashed overhead and the skies grumbled. Makoto made a defiant face and then rushed inside. Yukia exited the kitchen to greet her.

"Where's Uncle K?" Yukia asked her. "Did you see him?"

"I think he headed back to his house."

Yukia rolled his eyes and smiled. So it was just as he had assumed. "He's just gonna let us live in anarchy, huh."

He closed the door behind Makoto and securely locked it. Makoto wiped a few leaves off of her shirt onto the floor.

"What's anarchy/"

"Never mind." He escorted her back to the kitchen. "Here, dry this plate for me." He handed her the soapy wet dish and a fluffy, raggedy towel to dry with.

"How come Haru doesn't have to do this stuff?" Makoto pouted as she tiredly did as she was instructed.

"Because you're right here," Yukia responded, sticking out his tongue at her.

"When were Mama and Papa supposed to come home?"

"In a week or so," Yukia answered. "They should be on the boat to Hokkaido by now." He smiled down at his sister. "Don't worry, we'll get along without them. Do you know what you want to eat for dinner?"

"Tempura!"

"How about something we own?"

"Mmm…" Makoto replied, unyielding.

"I can make fish—or soba noodles."

"Teppanyaki!"

He sighed and laughed a little. His cooking abilities were nowhere near the level of his mother's.

"Soba it is."

"Why did you even ask me?" she grumbled, placing the dishes she had dried in the cupboard.

Yukia pulled the plug on the drain and set the rest of the clean dishes on a towel to dry.

"I'll tell you what. I'll see if I can bike into town and rent a movie or two for us to watch." He glanced out the window nervously. The rain was beginning to come down. "Um… on second thought, maybe I will try making food."

"Yay! Teppanyaki, teppanyaki!" Makoto whooped and wheeled out of the room.

Yukia exited the kitchen with her and then saw the front door open. Kiriko removed a soaked coat from his thin body and wrung it outside the house.

"The rain is coming down pretty hard," Kiriko admitted. "I wonder if it'll get worse."

"It's just a summer storm," Yukia protested, and violently, the thunder revolted in response.

Haruna pressed her hands to her ears and appeared distressed.

"Haru?" Yukia asked gently, approaching her. "Haru, you okay?"

"I don't like thunderstorms."

"I know Haru. Don't worry; it'll pass." He closed the curtains and switched on the television.

Rain and hail began hammering the windows, crinkling and crackling against the glass like tiny fireworks. While Kiriko watched TV with the girls, Yukia began preparing dinner.

"Teppanyaki, teppanyaki…" he grumbled, flipping through a recipe book. "I'll have to make edamame too. Mom will not be happy if we don't eat vegetables."

He removed an onion from the basket in the cupboard and lifted a large knife. Swiftly and smoothly he hacked away the onion, producing thin, curly white strips. After he had chopped up a few onions, he removed the griddle that they had kept underneath.

"You know, Makoto, this isn't even real Japanese food!"

"Who cares?" Makoto moaned from outside.

Yukia rolled his eyes. This dish was harder to make than she thought it was, but their mother had always made things look so easy! He plugged the griddle into the outlet and let it heat up for a few minutes before pouring oil over it. The oil popped and sizzled. Yukia reached into the fridge to grab a package of beef that had been freshly bought two days previous. The windows rattled and then burst forward without a second warning.

"Shit!" Yukia yelled, throwing his arms against the windows, trying to close both sides. He desperately struggled to secure the latch. Outside he could hear the eerie wail of the sirens as debree flew around. Leaves, twigs, rocks blew past, seemingly weightless as the wind whipped them around. The waves in the ocean crazily thrashed against the cliff side.

"Kiriko!" Yukia yelled., "Uncle, should we get into the cellar?"

Kiriko appeared in the kitchen doorway. Grimly, he nodded his head.

"Yep. Come on, let's go."

Yukia unplugged the griddle from the wall and left everything as it was. He snagged a couple of bags of junk food from the cupboard for the girls and then rushed out of the kitchen. Kiriko opened the front door.

"I don't understand this!" Yukia shouted above the din of the wind. "It was just supposed to be a severe thunderstorm!"

Kiriko handed each of them their coats. Haruna's face was pale and she looked absolutely terrified.

"Woo hoo! This storm is awesome!" Makoto shouted, flinging herself outside. The wind easily knocked her small body over like she was just one of those pieces of debree.

"Makoto!" Yukia snatched up his sister, watching the worried look in her eyes as she now realized the danger.

He headed back towards the shelter of the house, and all together, they scaled the side of it to get to the cellar door.

Kiriko jerked on the doors and found that they were stuck. Yukia and Kiriko bent over and then grunted as they both tried to pry them apart. With a crack the doors separated, allowing entrance into its inky black darkness. Kiriko removed a shaken Makoto from Yukia's arms and pushed her inside. Yukia looked back and saw his sister Haruna feebly standing at a corner, her knees trembling violently.

"Haru!" Yukia called. "Haruna, come on!"

"I'm scared!" she wailed in protest, choking back sobs.

"Haru," Yukia murmured, sweeping her up. "Shh, shh. Come on."

He headed back to the cellar. Suddenly Haru let out a short scream. Yukia turned and he saw it.

A magnificent monster, its mouth open wide, sucking in everything as water whipped around it. Cyclone.


	3. Chapter Two

They spent hours trapped inside that empty cellar, with nothing but an oil lantern to light the area. Yukia had tried offering the girls some daifuku, which had been in a bag that he had grabbed, but not even the sweet treat could entice them out of their petrified minds. Numbly, Yukia, Kiriko and Makoto sat while Haruna kept her face buried against her knees in a tight ball. Her shoulders were tensed and shaking.

The wind howled and they could hear the distinct sound of things being shredded and torn apart by the force of the cyclone. It was so loud, it prevented them from even being able to think. When there was a brief interruption, all that Yukia's mind could say was,

_It was just supposed to be a summer thunderstorm. A summer thunderstorm. _

When it finally had ended, Yukia raised his head and rubbed his bleary eyes. He tentatively the crawled towards the soaked cedar doors and fumbled for the lock. He frowned in confusion. The lock had busted, but yet the doors had remained shut. The door was damp, but why weren't they flooded?

Outside the sun was glittering in the sky, and the pace of the wind and movement of the ocean waves had returned to normal. Yukia emerged and shuddered happily at the light of the sun. A part of him had thought that he might never have seen it again, after spending that long night in the cellar. Part of the cliff side, from what he could make out, had been cleared away and littered. When Yukia turned around, he saw that most of their house was intact. Sure, the glass had been broken in, and there were a few holes in the side, but otherwise, it didn't look too bad.

Carefully, Yukia removed his sisters from the cellar and gently set them on the grass. He then helped Kiriko out as well, whose old bones were struggling to move after being immobile for so long.

"This is astounding," Kiriko declared, approaching the house with a wide eye.

He walked up the porch steps where some of the boards had been torn out. Splinters precariously threatened to stab them, but they were easily avoidable.

"I would've thought that the house would be gone," Kiriko said, resting a hand on the support for the porch roof.

It was insanely unbelievable, that this old house (which Yukia had remembered was built in the 1920s) was still intact even after all of that. But clearly things had been uprooted and destroyed—the beaches were littered with the carcasses of dead fish, and seaweed had been torn from the sea beds and thrown carelessly onto the sand. The cliff was wet and slippery, and the mud was choking what grass there was.

Kiriko opened the door to reveal a thin sheet of water that dampened the ground. Glass was scattered underneath the windows. Yukia carefully maneuvered his sisters up the steps and into the house. Haruna rushed to the sofa and with a happy sigh, picked up her mostly undamaged book. Makoto eyed the broken glass in wonder. She glanced over her shoulder and looked at her brother and uncle.

"What are we gonna do?" she asked.

"We'll clean up," Yukia reassured her. "It should be fine. You girls stay away from the glass."

Kiriko and Yukia fetched the brooms and dust pans and swept up the glass. Working together they managed to get it done. They chucked it in the wastebasket in the kitchen and found that there had been little damage there as well. The food that Yukia had attempted to make had been thrown on the floor and made stir fry with the glass from the kitchen window, and a few doors had been torn off the cupboards, but it wasn't anything that they couldn't fix. The two then proceeded to check the bedrooms and found that, once again, other than the broken glass, there was nothing that had upset the house.

"I don't understand," Yukia said, beginning to pick up a few toys in his sisters' room that had been thrown around. "We should have been torn apart by that storm. We're right on the edge of the ocean!"

"Some odd occurrence," Kiriko suggested, crossing his arms. "Or we're all just lucky bastards."

Yukia smirked and set the toys in the treasure chest. He then remembered the last rooms that he had to check.

"I better access the damage that's been done to the operation and examination room," Yukia said, brushing past his uncle and continuing down the hallway.

He opened both of the doors and was once again, completely astounded. It had remained untouched. No glass had been broken. The floor was completely dry. It was as his father had left it a few days ago after performing an operation.

"Oh my God… Kiriko, look at this."

Kiriko had already observed it. "Impossible," he whispered in a growl of a voice, mystified by what he saw.

They both exited the rooms feeling very strange by what they had just seen.

"Yukia! I see something funny coming up over the hill!" Makoto shouted from the front of the house.

Yukia and Kiriko rushed forward. Yukia pulled his little sister away from the window and peered outside. He saw a man, drenched and his clothes torn apart by the wind climb up the hill with what little strength he could muster. His knees were buckling underneath him, and he finally collapsed onto the ground.

"Whoa!" Yukia cried out, running outside. He crouched by the man and turned him over onto his back.

The man groaned in response and felt for his leg, which had been penetrated multiple times by shards of glass. It was a complete mess: there was blood that had dried on and there was blood continuing to rush out. Yukia stared at the man's face, and found that he was very young. He had a scraggly appearance, and looked awfully familiar…

"Katsu," he grumbled then.

Katsu was a young man whose father had run a few shops in the town where they lived, and being one of the richest kids in town, he was also one of the biggest jerks. Frequently, he picked on Yukia, and always had bothered him since they were in school together. Yukia could still remember the time when he had been walking home in the rain and Katsu had followed him all that time just to push him into a mud puddle.

Now it seemed that Katsu was before him, and Yukia had his life in his hands.

"Help." Katsu's hand reached out and grabbed Yukia's dirtied shirt. His bruised fingers closed around his sleeve. "Help."

Yukia looked up at Kiriko. "I think I have to perform an operation. It looks like one of these pieces of glass is severing an artery. If we don't get it removed, he could lose his leg."

"How much are you going to charge for that?"

"I don't know. Depends on if he lives or not." He shrugged his shoulders.

Kiriko shook his head. "No, Yukia, you're crazy. You're fourteen years old, you're not going to perform an operation."

"Well you can't. Your hands are too old. I have the tools and I have the skills necessary. I have to help him," Yukia protested, shaking his head at his uncle. "Besides… I don't want the girls to have a memory of some boy dying out on our lawn."

"I'll get a stretcher then," Kiriko grumbled as he headed back inside the house.

Yukia nodded and glanced back down at Katsu, who was moaning in pain.

"Katsu? This is Yukia Hazama," Yukia murmured, glaring down at the boy. "I'm going to perform surgery on you. You're going to have to pay me whatever fee I designate. Do you understand?"

Katsu, his eyes barely open, nodded slowly and watched as Kiriko exited from the house carrying a stretcher. Setting it down on the ground, they rolled Katsu onto it, and lifted the heavy boy into the house. They set him down in the examination room on a wheeling bed before changing into their surgical garb.

Now in the operation room where Yukia had been many times before with animals, Yukia realized that this was his first operation that he was going to perform on a human. He held up his hands away from his body, his nerves electrified by what he had to do. Katsu laid on the table, unawake, as he had been put to rest by anesthesia. An oxygen mask was fixated over his mouth and nose.

"Surgical tweezers," Yukia said to his uncle, who in turn handed them to him.

Yukia began to remove the little pieces of glass lodged above the surface of Katsu's body. He dropped the little chips into a pan that Kiriko held out from them. Glancing up, he checked the body's heart rate and blood pressure. They were okay, but it was obvious that he was in cardiovascular stress. An artery had definitely been hit.

"Scalpel," Yukia said, and the scalpel met his hand.

Yukia inserted the scalpel into Katsu's leg, where an oddly large piece of glass had been cleanly inserted. Taking a few clamps, he pulled the area apart for a closer look, being careful not to hurt the muscle, which had already been torn by the glass. He saw the severed artery and winced. It looked excruciatingly painful. He wondered how Katsu could have even moved up the hill.

"You might have to amputate the leg," Kiriko suggested. "A lot of blood has been lost, and the leg has been cut off from body circulation. It hasn't had oxygen in a while."

"I just have to remove this piece of glass and patch up the artery," Yukia protested.

He used the tweezers and wiggled the piece of glass out of the artery. Blood sprayed onto the front of his clothes and the heart rate monitor beeped warningly. Yukia examined the area for any other pieces of glass.

"Suturing," Yukia said as he squeezed the severed ends of the artery together. He inserted the needle and began to stitch it up, and the blood stopped.

"Heart rate and blood pressure stabilizing."

"Surgery done?" Yukia asked his uncle, smiling.

Kiriko patted his nephew's head with a towel and removed the sweat. "Surgery done."


	4. Chapter Three

Katsu laid in a bed in the examination room, groaning as he stirred himself awake. After a quick survey of his body, he found that all the areas where glass had hurt him had been removed, and bandaged up.

"Hey."

He looked up and saw Yukia standing in the doorway, cleanly dressed and carrying a tray.

"I brought you some lunch." He carried it over and set it across Katsu.

Katsu stared at Yukia as if he was astounded. He sat up, but found that with one leg that wasn't working, it was hard to move.

"I could have amputated your leg," Yukia admitted. "But I managed to save it. You're going to have a long recovery ahead of you. A lot of the muscle had been shredded."

Katsu sipped from the bowl of miso soup and frowned, sticking out his tongue.

"Hazama, this tastes like shit."

"And I'll charge you for your food and board, too, if you're not careful about what you say to me," Yukia responded dryly, rolling his eyes. He got up and pulled the blinds open, allowing the sunlight to trickle in. "You already are going to have to pay me back for that operation."

Katsu snorted. "With what?"

"Um, with _money_? I'm a freelance surgeon—er, well my father is, and we used his equipment to help you. It's damn expensive. I'm going to need about 500,000 yen for that leg of yours. I'm sure that even my own dad would find that cheap."

"The whole entire town was devastated by the damn typhoon, you baka. I can't pay you!"

"Then why did you come up the hill?" Yukia demanded, glaring at him. "And quit calling me an idiot! Shouldn't you be a little more grateful to the person who saved your life, you jerk?"

Katsu once again snorted and rolled his eyes. "I came up the hill because I was _dying_. Your house is the only house that is intact in the whole town. Must be made out of steel or something."

Yukia took a stethoscope off of a table behind him and inserted the knobs into his ears and pressed the cold steel to Katsu's chest. Katsu winced in response and glared at Yukia.

"Hey! Aren't you listening to me?"

"Yes, I am, and your heart is working fairly well," Yukia said with a faint smile.

"There's people in town that are dying! Aren't you going to help them?"

"Well… I mean, if they don't have any money… I am a freelance surgeon after all."

"You are _unlicensed_!" Katsu growled, clenching his teeth together. "There's a huge damn difference! Quit acting like you're not a criminal!"

"Ooh, a criminal," Yukia smirked, leaning back in his chair. "Look, after all the crap you've given me over the years, you're lucky that I've got a moral code that told me that I should save you."

He stood up and laughed a little. Katsu glared at him in disgust. Yukia rolled his eyes at Katsu's expression.

"Oh my God, drama queen. I'm going to help. I had to check in on you first before I took off." Yukia turned around and packed the stethoscope into his suitcase, which was filled with a few other surgical instruments. It was a spare of his father's. He snapped the suitcase closed with a satisfactory smile.

"You stay here and keep recovering. I'll be back in a while with a few buddies for you."

"Hey! Wait!" Katsu thundered angrily, and Yukia winced at the sound of his voice and turned around.

Katsu looked towards Yukia pleadingly. "You have to save my dad. He's trapped underneath some stuff at our old house. I couldn't get him out, so I came here for help. He's probably dead by now."

Yukia nodded seriously. "I'll go there first. Don't worry."

He headed out of the examination room and headed to the front of the house. Outside, Kiriko had prepared his bike for him.

"You're going to bike into town?" he asked. "How are you going to get patients back?"

"I got the bubble if I need it," Yukia answered. "I'll try to find a car in town if I can. But I got to get down there."

Yukia laid the suitcase behind his seat on a metal bed. He strapped it down and then climbed on the bike and carefully headed down the hill. The tires slashed through the mud and threw it up and around in the air. He focused on getting down as slowly and safely as possible. As soon as he had gone down the hill, he found that the ground was less slippery. The town was in sight.

Well, what _had _been a town was in sight. The buildings were basically wiped out, and the streets had been flooded. Rubble was piled up in tall towers, spattered with trash. He could see people hobbling through the town, and the sound of a baby screaming. As he entered, he drove around a streetlight that had been uprooted and laid across the road, the light pushed in through the window of a destroyed second floor of a house. Large chunks of trees rolled around in the street. People walking through the ankle high water looked over towards Yukia, their faces unreadable. They watched him, warily, as he biked through and headed towards Katsu's house.

Out in the front of Katsu's house stood a portly woman with bloodied arms. She stood in front of her house, wailing as a few men tried helplessly to roll a car off of the body of a heavyset man that Yukia knew was Katsu's father, Mr. Watanabe.

"Stand back!" Yukia cried out, hopping off his bike and kicking the kickstand into the dirt. He rushed forward with his suitcase and headed to Mr. Watanabe.

He was soaked with sweat and his face had been caked with dirt. He recognized Yukia, and his eyes narrowed into unfriendly slits.

"Where is my son?" he rasped.

"I helped him. He's at my house, recovering." He looked over at Mrs. Watanabe and nodded to her. "Do you know if there's any other doctor in the town that could help me?"

"No," Mrs. Watanabe whispered, shaking her head as she struggled to not cry. "No, no one has seen him since yesterday afternoon. We think he's dead."

Yukia set his jaw. "So I'm completely alone in this."

He removed a pair of gloves from his suitcase and snapped them on over his hands. He then removed a scalpel and crouched down by Mr. Watanabe.

"Hey!" Mr. Watanabe, who laid on the ground on his belly, flailed like a fish in protest. "What the hell are you doing?!"

Yukia removed an anesthetic from his suitcase and clicked the button on the syringe to allow it to release a little. The men who had been helping stood back nervously. The material that laid across Mr. Watanabe's legs was heavy and crushed him to the earth. Yukia wrinkled his nose as he saw the crumpled legs that had basically folded into themselves. Amputation was definitely an option that was a clear course of action.

"First of all, before I operate, I must ask if you are going to be willing to pay my fees."

Mr. Watanabe grumbled underneath his breath. His wife approached Yukia and nodded earnestly, her fists clenched in determination.

"Whatever it takes! Please, save my husband!"

Yukia injected the general anesthetic into Watanabe's lower region, which would make him numb from the waist down if he wasn't already. Yukia then removed his scalpel and prepared to make an incision.

"Personally, Mr. Watanabe, I don't think that I can save your leg. It's going to be really hard, based off of what skill I have."

Watanabe whimpered in response. Yukia narrowed his eyes and then made the incision below Watanabe's knee.

"I need you guys to keep trying to roll this off of him—but go backwards, don't go over his head. I'm trying to amputate his leg in a few parts so I can salvage it."

"Amputate it?"

"I'm going to need a lot of ice!" Yukia shouted out. "So, if you can find it, let me know."

"The ice cream shoppe!" someone shouted, and a group of people went rushing off.

Yukia's scalpel sliced cleanly into the skin, muscle. It was the bone that he was going to have to work around. He managed to cut the bone too, but it was going to be hard to reattach the two ends.

"We couldn't find any ice," a man shouted as they returned.

Yukia nodded. "Mr. Watanabe, I'm afraid that I'm not going to able to save your legs."

"Ohh…" Watanabe groaned, and he could tell that the man was going to start crying.

"I'm very sorry," Yukia mumbled. He finished severing both legs below the knee, and then sewed the extra skin all around it.

"I'm going to need somebody to carry him up the hill to my home," Yukia announced, standing up and removing his gloves. "Be very careful. Take him to my uncle, and he should take care of him and make sure I did everything correct."

"Thank you!" The missus blubbered, chasing after the two men that were carrying Watanabe at a fast pace up the hill.

When Yukia raised his head, he found that a bunch of people had now surrounded him. He blinked in disbelief as one by one; people who had considered him taboo now approached him and begged him to assist them.

Yukia performed each necessary medicinal first aid procedure as was required, and sent each patient up to the house. He removed glass, set broken bones, and fixed dislocated limbs. He even helped a young woman who had damaged her eyes, which unfortunately, he could also not salvage.

At the end of the day, when Yukia was biking back up the hill, he found that at least a third of the town's population (the people who lived closest to him) had gathered on the lawn outside his house and made camp. People were stretching out blankets and some were starting fires.

Kiriko stood on the porch, his arms crossed. "Yukia, what have you done!?"

A steady stream of people trickled in and out of the house. Makoto and Haruna were hanging around on the porch, waving to their brother and welcoming him home as he approached. Yukia raised his head and offered his uncle a sheepish grin as he pushed the bike up against the side of the house.

"I've been busy all day long, I'll have you know."

"You better not have killed anyone."

"How dare you," Kiriko cried out furiously. "I did my duty as a doctor and gave them the necessary treatment. I'm not just going to execute people needlessly—"

"Thanks, Uncle." Yukia said with a warm smile as he climbed up the steps.

Kiriko cracked his knuckles and frustrated, shook his head at Yukia's disheveled appearance.

"You have blood all over you. Go shower immediately."

Yukia was thankful for the warm shower, which was working as well. He had noticed that his house was the only one that had any running water. He figured the house must have been hooked up to its own private well or something. People had gathered in the kitchen and were helping themselves to glasses full of water, which he could have very well charged them for.

When he exited the bathroom and changed into cleaner clothes, he found that Katsu was waiting outside the door for him, propped up on a pair of crutches.

"I wanted to thank you for what you did for my dad."

Yukia shrugged his shoulders and passed by him without a second thought. Katsu narrowed his eyes and hobbled after him.

"Hey! Are you even listening to me?"

Yukia headed into his bedroom, which had been occupied by a few people. They now left when they saw him entering the room.

"I said thank you, you dork!"

"You still have to pay me. For both of your operations, that'll be about 900,000 yen."

"900,000?! Are you kidding me?!" Katsu roared. "Hey, I heard that you were charging people cheaper prices! What the hell gives?"

"Your family is made of money, Katsu. Even in the time of a crisis. It doesn't even really matter," Yukia said, flopping down on his bed in exhaustion. He yawned and stretched his arms above his head.

"Oh my God. Here I was, thinking that I was going to be friendly, and of course, even _you _screw it up. Typical Hazama."

He sat down on Yukia's desk chair and his muscles flexed as he clutched onto his crutches.

"You're still here?" Yukia grumbled, barely opening an eye to glare at him. "You shouldn't even be up."

"You're the one who told me that I have to go through therapy or whatever for my leg. Why not start now?"

"Uh, because I just performed a surgery on you today?" Yukia retorted.

"You don't get it. My legs are to me what your hands are probably to you," Katsu sneered. "I need them for baseball, so I have to fix my leg as soon as possible."

Yukia was silent then, stunned by his level of determination. He thought that Katsu had just been a spoiled, whiny rich kid. Apparently he had an independent bone in his body. Katsu sat there with a hard look on his face, staring down at the floor. He might have been embarrassed by what he just said.

"If you'll let me sleep, I'll accept your apology," Yukia responded finally, sighing heavily as he relaxed his body once again.

And silently, Katsu got up, hobbled out of the room, and the door squeaked shut as it closed.


	5. Chapter Four

When the morning rolled around, Yukia had shoved his face into his pillow and had drifted off into a deep sleep. He woke up only because his sister, Haruna, had entered his room and gently poked his cheek till he stirred conscious. Blearily, he opened his eyes and arched a brow sarcastically at his little sister.

"What's up, Haru?"

"Kiriko says that you have to make your rounds."

"Okay. Okay, yeah, I should." He glanced over at the clock and noticed that it was nine thirty. What? He had been asleep since six o clock!... _yesterday._ Apparently, surgery took a lot of energy out of him!

He mustered what little will power he had to pull himself out of bed. Stretching, he pulled on clean clothes and then exited into the hallway. There was a bit of traffic, as a few people were visiting patients that he was keeping in the examination room.

"This isn't everyone in town, even," Yukia mumbled to himself as he saw the fifteen or so patients he had squeezed into the room. He might later have to use his and the girls' rooms. Kiriko's shack had been totally demolished, so there wasn't any hope of using that.

The conditions that laid ahead with fifteen patients in one cramped little area gave way to sanitation problems, and with people like Mr. Watanabe, who needed no pathogens creating infections, it concerned him a little bit. But it was the best that they could do with a disaster taking place.

He pulled on his stethoscope and went to go and check up on the patients. Haruna stood in the doorway. Somehow, she felt as if she could examine the room and know exactly what was in it: by her sense of smell and her acutely strong hearing. For example, by the smell of sweat and the mumbling of curse words, she knew that Katsu laid directly in front of her. She followed the sound of her brother's voice as he passed from patient to patient, and heard the sound of his pen scratching across their charts, which were placed on a thin sheet of cardboard.

"Everyone seems to be doing okay," Yukia murmured, stepping back. He clapped his hands together and then he spoke. "Attention everyone! Those of you who seem to be the most recovered, you will have to move out of this examination room today and rejoin your families! I will give you further instruction on what to do, but above all, do not strain yourselves!"

"Wha-at?" an old woman with a broken arm grumbled at Yukia, glaring at him. "What do you mean? You're kicking us out?"

"I have only treated a third of the town, if that," Yukia replied, returning her glare. "More have probably tried to make their way here. I'm going to need more room for more patients."

With that, Yukia then left the room, and Haruna wandered after him. From the kitchen he could smell wonderful things arising, and hear the voices of several women bickering while they cooked breakfast for various families. Kiriko was supervising them, so Yukia made no move to reprimand them for using their food. Besides, it looked from out on the front lawn where most people were camped out that they were using rationed portions of food: nothing was extremely big and unneeded.

Makoto was sitting cross legged on the couch by the broken television set, gazing at it pitifully as she sipped from a bowl of cereal. Yukia placed his hands on his hips and glanced over his shoulder at his uncle.

"Uncle," he called out, "does anyone have a radio anywhere? Do we know when other help is coming?"

"I do," a woman from the kitchen called out. She exited, revealing herself as a heavy set woman with a large and thick brow, and curly brown hair that had been matted with sweat. She wiped her hands on an already dirty dish towel. "My son, Hiroki, he has a radio outside. He's been toying with it for hours."

"I see. Do you know if help is coming?"

She shook her head. "Seems like a lot of the roads are backed up by traffic. Boats from Hokkaido have been prohibited to move. We're on our own for a few more days it looks like."

"Yeah," a woman called from the kitchen. "So we'll be spending plenty of time together, cutie!"

All of the women roared in laughter and Yukia blushed, ducking his head slightly in self consciousness. Makoto rolled her eyes as she finished up her bowl of cereal. Yukia headed into the kitchen and a woman handed him a small bowl with a hefty serving of rice. Another woman carefully laid a fish across the top of it.

"For all your hard work," the two told him with winning smiles.

One woman elbowed him and said, "I've got a daughter that I'd be plenty happy to introduce you to."

"Is that so?" Yukia smiled politely.

He sat on the counter and chatted freely with the other woman as they cooked. He munched down the food, which, while wasn't as good as his mother's, was still tasty and filled his stomach. When Yukia had finished, someone took his dishes from his hands and shoved them in the sink which was almost overflowing with soapy water and other pots and pans.

_We're running a refugee camp_, Yukia thought in disbelief as he exited the room. _Man, Papa would flip if he knew… _

Yukia then headed outside and traveled past the small collective camps that had accumulated on the front lawn. They slept on raggedy blankets and laid in front of small holes in the earth which had served as tiny fire pits. Splinters of wood that they had gathered from broken houses and trees laid in an enormous pile in the center of the camps to be shared by all.

"Hey!" he then heard a thunderous voice bellow, and rolling his eyes, he thought it to be Katsu's. But when the voice echoed out again, he noticed that it had a feminine edge to it.

People murmured in disturbance and raised their heads to look up over the hill. A girl, who was wearing a pair of torn, muddy blue jeans and a formerly pretty shirt that was equally messy, hoisted up an old woman over the hill.

"Is this where the doctor is?" she called out, furiously eying the first boy she saw.

The boy shook his head and flung his arm out to point to Yukia, who stood there dumbstruck, watching the girl with wide eyes. She turned her attention to him and stumbled forward.

"Please! My aunt here is very, very sick," she cried out. "We came from on the other side of town. We've been walking all night."

"I understand," Yukia said with a nod. "Please help me carry her to the examination room."

The woman then lurched forward and began hacking up bits of blood. Yukia's eyes widened. Together, he and the girl helped hurry the woman to the examination room.

"Everyone that can get up and move, get out!" Yukia yelled as he cleared off a spot for her to be examined.

He opened up the woman's shirt and then fixated his stethoscope. He took her pulse and found it to be rather erratic. Glancing at the woman's face, he estimated that she was probably around seventy plus years old. The woman leaned over the table and coughed up more blood onto the floor. Spectators gasped and backed away in shock.

Yukia then decided to test the woman's blood pressure. He heard Kiriko approach him from behind and speak to the girl.

"What's her medical history?"

"Well, I-I don't know," the girl stammered, almost defensive in her tone. "I only started living with her a while ago. I'm not from around here—"

"—Then you are useless to us," Kiriko snapped, cutting her off. "Get out."

The girl left the room and then Yukia finished taking the woman's blood pressure. His eyes widened. He began to prod and poke areas of the woman's body where he knew the cavities were. She was showing a wide variety of symptoms: anemia, edemas, high blood pressure… but what was the bleeding?

"She's coughing up blood?" Kiriko asked, surveying the small mess that was on the tiled floor.

"Right. Uncle, I think this is chronic kidney disease. What's causing the blood to come up?"

"A pulmonary edema, most likely," Kiriko answered. "Hook her up to an oxygen tank. What kind of pressure are we going to give her?"

"Based off of what she has, continuous airway pressure," Yukia replied swiftly, dragging a tank over and fixating it over the woman's mouth. "That's the only way to treat that kind of edema, right?"

"Correct."

Yukia stared at the old woman with saddening eyes. Her chest was beginning to relax. "I think she's in about second or third stage, Uncle."

"You wouldn't know that until you opened her up."

"The cyclone probably upset her heart a lot," Yukia said, putting away his equipment in a safe place. "So. Are you going to break the news to her niece, or am I?"

"That she's dying and there's virtually nothing we can do?" Kiriko arched a brow at him. "I might be tempted to suggest to the girl that she pull the plug on her."

"There's no pulling the plug on this woman yet! She's not even really suitable to be on dialysis. Not until stage four."

"Yes. But she's only at stage three, and yet her quality of life is that low." Kiriko demonstrated to the woman in the bed and fixated a sharp gaze on Yukia. "You have to understand, Yukia. We doctors can do all we can do, but what your father never realized is that there are some diseases that you cannot cure."

"Then what _can _I do to help?"

"Keep her hooked up to the oxygen. Give her ACEIs or ARBs if we have them. But there isn't much more we can do short of an entire renal transplant, and given the state of her cardiovascular system, she won't be able to survive through that."

Yukia set his jaw and nodded. "Alright then. So I'll tell her."

"Good. I'll set her on her treatment."

Kiriko wandered away and Yukia exited the examination room. While the woman was not dead, it was like his first patient had died. Leaning up against the wall, her arms crossed, stood the girl. She wore trendy high top sneakers, and her jet black hair was ratted out. She turned her head and stared at Yukia warily.

"Where's the doctor?"

"I am the doctor," Yukia responded quietly. "She has chronic kidney disease—we estimate it to be stage 3 or so. That's been coupled with a pulmonary edema, which was causing her difficulty of breathing."

"So she's dying?"

"Yes. There's not much we can do, given limited supplies. We're setting her on some enzymes that can slow her progression to stage 5, and monitoring her blood pressure while she's on oxygen."

"How much longer does she have left then?" the girl's voice seemed oddly unemotional.

"Could be months," Yukia replied apologetically. "I'm sorry, miss, but I'm afraid my level of expertise can only go so far…"

"But I thought you said you were the doctor."

"Yeah, but I'm only fourteen."

She blinked. "Really?"

He nodded slowly. Her mouth spread into a wide, toothy smile. "Hey, that's pretty cool."

Her smile made him blush and he nodded, smiling back at her as best he could muster.

"Isn't your dad that super famous surgeon?"

"Yes, he is. But unfortunately, he's on vacation with my mother, so I'm taking over in his absence." He extended a hand out to her and the two shook hands. "I'm Yukia Hazama."

"Ruri Takada," she said, and her smooth voice seemed to melt him.

"Nice to meet you, Ruri. Despite the circumstances," he added hastily.

"Yeah, well…" she wiped her hands on a clean area on the front of her shirt. "I barely know the old woman. She just took me in after a big mishap I had. Plus, she needs a caretaker, too, so I decided to help."

She glanced up at him. "Uh, is there any place that I can shower and change my clothes? I've been walking all night and tripping around in the mud."

"Yes, yes! I can lend you some of my mother's clothes if you like," Yukia offered, guiding her to where the bathroom is.

"Thanks," she said with a smile as she entered the bathroom. "For everything."

"Yeah," Yukia murmured, and even as the door was shut in his face, he continued to stand there.

He was lovestruck.


	6. Chapter Five

_Black Jack rolled back the sleeves of his shirt and allowed Dr. Okata to take a blood sample. Dr. Okata's pinched up little nose sniffed and he inserted the needle into Black Jack's veins. Black Jack, having been used to being around needles and the like, no longer winced at the intense pain. _

"_What you have," Dr. Okata said, handing Black Jack a bandage, "is nothing more than rheumatoid arthritis." _

_Black Jack set his jaw and Pinoko placed her hands on her husband's shoulders. He glared at the doctor. _

"_Yes," he hissed. "But by my resources I was told that you were one of the best experts on it in Japan. That's why I came here to Muroran. To see if you could do anything about it."_

"_The pain you described only occurs in the joints of your hands. There is no surgery that I could perform that would help you. I can only continue to prescribe the same drugs that you have been taking, and maybe a biological agent or two._

_Black Jack glared at the white lab coat of the doctor as he set his blood sample on a test tube rack. He rubbed his hands together and stared at them. The pain wasn't as intense now, but it would get worse later. Dr. Okata looked over his shoulder at Black Jack and seeing his face, turned his body around to meet him and his wife. _

"_I'm sorry," he said genuinely, "but there is not much more I could do."_

_Black Jack squeezed his eyes shut. "I have three children. Based off of the work I do, I support my children with these hands. Through surgery." _

_Dr. Okata smiled a bit too playfully. "I know. I've known that for years." _

_He had been a long time friend of Black Jack's, all the way back from when they were in medical school together. The two rarely came in contact considering that they lived on separate islands. _

"_It's a disease that's basically a sign of old age. There's nothing to worry about, really. I doubt that there are any problems with your kidneys, and if you insist upon it, we can perform surgery. But I wouldn't want to risk damaging your hands or putting unnecessary stress upon them."_

"_I just want to know how long it'll be before my hands can't perform an operation anymore."Black Jack responded testily._

"_I'd say roughly three to five years before the pain starts to cripple you on a day to day pattern. Right now, it's only about once every few weeks that you've noticed the disturbance. It's not going to prevent you from racking up as much yen as possible. I'd recommend that in addition to the drug therapy I'm prescribing for you, that you also exercise regularly and increase your intake of vitamin D. Given that you have the disease, you know the risks that come with it."_

"_Increased risk of heart disease and various cardiovascular problems," Black Jack mumbled, his mind whirling. "Lung problems. Kidney problems."_

"_Yes, yes…" Dr. Okata now seemed a bit nervous. "That's all common…"_

_Black Jack stood up and grabbed his coat off of a rack. He had heard enough—there wasn't much more that he needed to be told. _

"_Chenchei," Pinoko whispered nervously, following after her husband. _

"_Thank you, Dr. Okata," Black Jack said, and then he opened the door and exited without looking back._

Black Jack replayed the day's events over and over in his mind as he stared down at his hands. They were back in their hotel room, and Pinoko was in the bathroom, dolling herself up before he took her out to eat someplace tonight. There was a little pain here and there in them, nothing that was too serious, but the thought of it progressing to a point where he one day might not even be able to pick up a fork to eat his food or perform a surgery sickened him.

He could tell that Pinoko was terrified of his prognosis as well. She had lived her whole life with him, had married him, had given him children, and now in her old age, she would have to take care of him as well.

He was in his fifties. And while it was apparently genetic (he had found that one of his grandmothers had had the disease) he hadn't expected to develop anything such as arthritis until he was much older—only women would have developed the disease at his age. He guessed he must have been the lucky case.

"Chenchei?" Pinoko murmured as she exited the bathroom. She came over and sat down by him. She ran her fingers through his hair, the black side which was starting to spot with traces of gray and white.

She folded her hands into her lap when he didn't respond. She glanced over at him silently. She bit her lip, and opened her mouth to speak.

"Are you going to ask Dr. Okata if he can perform a surgery to fix you?"

"Pinoko, this is an autoimmune disease. There is no cure for it." he sighed. "Coming here was… useless."

She once again bit her lip and wrung her hands. "Does that mean… does that mean that it's going to kill you?"

"It can reduce my lifespan anywhere from three to twelve years," Black Jack answered. "But… that at least gives me the time I need to see them grow up."

"Will you have to quit practicing?"

"Eventually, yes." He sighed heavily and ran a hand through his hair.

"Alright," she said understandingly. "I get it. Kuro'o, do you want to go and eat something?"

"Not right now. I've sort of lost my appetite."

"Okay." Pinoko picked up the remote control to their small television set and turned it on.

Instantly, severe weather warnings scrolled along the bottom of the screen and at the top, a news network was reporting on a typhoon that had swept up from Kyushu and was now on its way to hitting northern Japan. Pinoko and Black Jack watched the report in horror as the edges and sides of Honshu, including the northeastern area where they lived, were lit up in bright red.

"A typhoon?!" Pinoko cried out, clamping a hand over her mouth in shock. "The girls! Yukia! Kiriko!"

"Let's go," Black Jack said, grabbing her arm. "We've got to get back home."

Waves of people stood down at the docks, and lines of policemen were cutting them off from the boats that were stocked at the sea. The crowd raged, trying to push through the defensive wall, but they could not succeed.

Black Jack managed to shove his way through the crowd to reach the top of it. He shouted to a policeman and motioned him over. Grudgingly, the policeman stepped down to his level.

"This whole area has been closed off," he told him. "There's no returning to Honshu tonight. Not when you can get caught up in bad weather like a typhoon."

"We have children that are at home!" Pinoko cried out, voice trembling with rage. "They live on Honshu! We need to go home and help them."

"I reckon if you decided to leave them at home by themselves, they know enough to protect themselves from the storm," the policeman quipped, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, but there's nothing that we can do."

Black Jack clenched his jaw and his body trembled in furry. Yes, there was nothing that they could do, he knew that. He wasn't going to bother to pay money to charter a boat back to Honshu when they could very well die trying to get back home.

"Come on, Pinoko." He grabbed her hand and dragged her back through the crowd to his car.

The rain drummed down on them as they approached the black vehicle and soon, hail started to fall. The crowd, pained by the size of the hail, dispersed and began to flee from the docks as the policemen now began to roughly push them away. Black Jack and Pinoko slowly drove through the rain back towards the hotel.

Late that evening, after eating out at a soba restaurant and returning to their room, Pinoko awoke to find that the side that her husband slept on had been left cold. She raised her body slightly, rubbing her bleary eyes, until she heard the sound of him grunting in frustration at the other end of the bed. Worried, she hastily reached over and jerked on the lamp light. It illuminated their shadowy unfamiliar surroundings.

He sat on the edge of the bed, clutching onto his hands which she noticed must have been twisting and grinding him into misery. She crawled towards him and sat down beside him. She placed her small little hands around his, wrapping them tightly.

"Your hands are acting up this badly?"

"This is the first time that they've done something like this," Black Jack responded, trying to stretch out his fingers as gently as he could. The stiffness was amazingly taut, and his swollen joints seemed to be unrelenting.

"Do you want me to get your medicine?"

"No thank you. I don't think it's going to help."

"A glass of water?" she suggested, determined to be helpful.

"Okay," he said after a long pause.

She got up to go to the bathroom and returned with a small glass of cold water. She lifted it to his lips and helped him drink some of it. When he could stretch out his hands enough to hold the glass, he took it from her and drank from it himself.

"Thanks," he told her.

"No problem."

They sat there in dead silence. Pinoko wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled closer to him, squishing her cheek up against his warm, muscular arms. The arms that had protected her, and had loved her.

"My hands are getting worse and worse. I may not be able to use a scalpel… is this some God's idea of a joke?"

"Don't talk about it," Pinoko snapped, reprimanding him. She shook her head and cried out, "You're the best doctor in the world, Kuro'o! You can fix it! I know you can!"

"I don't think you quite understand the concept of autoimmune disease. There is no cure. When an autoimmune disease onsets in a human, your immune system begins attacking itself. And there's no way of stopping it." he sighed heavily. "And inevitably, my hands will fail me one day completely."

"Then teach me, Black Jack."

"Huh?" he turned to her, dumbfounded.

"I can be a surgeon!" she declared in all seriousness, gazing at him directly.

Shaking his head, he turned away from her and laughed in a deep throaty voice. Pinoko rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, gazing up at the ceiling.

"You don't have to worry about being a surgeon. When the time comes, we'll have enough money to retire comfortably and put the girls and Yukia through school. We won't have to worry about finances." He smiled softly at her, and then dejected, looked away.

He sighed heavily, leaning forward and propping his chin up on his knuckles. "I at least won't fail you that way."

"Kuro'o," she grumbled now, an edge of frustration entering her voice. "You won't have failed me if you can't operate. To me, you will always be the great Black Jack."

She moved his hands to her lips and kissed the palms. "And these hands will never fail me."

She looked up at him and kissed him, slowly. They closed their eyes and immersed themselves in each other, and after a few minutes, Black Jack leaned over and switched off the lamp light.


	7. Chapter Six

Yukia completed his rounds the next morning with record time. He readjusted medications and recorded data on clipboards before whisking himself to the kitchen, where once again the neighborhood mothers flirted, teased, and fed him until he left to do something else.

Yukia had kept a close watch on Ruri, who he thought had spent the whole day following him around. It seemed that wherever he turned, Ruri was behind him, sitting in a corner casually chatting with someone, or reading a book. He noticed that Makoto had instantly taken a liking to her and had practically become her tail. Yukia knew why: not only was she beautiful, but she was cool.

Ruri was a different kind of beauty, however. She had scars on her face that was from acne, but her eyes were a deep dark blue. She had thick, long lashes that looked like they were soaked with mascara but in reality, there was none there at all. She did wore thick black eyeliner, however, and applied a smoky eye shadow that made her alluring. Her lips were pert, puffy, and attractive, fitting her heart shaped face quite nicely. When she had washed her hair it turned out choppy, cut in a sleek style that showed traces of dark blue dye in it. But while she was a gorgeous girl, it seemed like there was something off about her. The women tended to not like her and would ignore her until she walked by them, in which they would quickly whisper to each other. Men shook their heads at her and boys, while also impressed with her looks, seemed afraid of her. Yukia didn't understand why, but he didn't care enough to try to find out. He figured the truth would come out on its own.

While wiping a few grains of rice from his mouth, Ruri got off of the armchair in the corner and approached him, her high tops echoing.

"Hey. So, how's my auntie doing?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"She's doing well," Yukia responded, nodding to her. "I've set her on blood pressure medication and a small dosage of nitroprusside."

"Is it gross?"

"What?" he asked, blinking.

She pointed to her nostrils with two fingers. "You know… you have to stick those tubes up her nose."

"Well… yeah, I guess that was gross. But I mean, I'm a doctor."

"I thought you told them you were a freelance surgeon!" Makoto's voice protested.

Yukia looked down to see that Makoto had approached Ruri from behind. Ruri simply smiled.

"Yukia, if you're not busy, would you like to go and run around with me?"

"Yeah!" Makoto agreed.

"Actually, Makoto-chan, I was thinking that it would just be me and your brother," Ruri protested gently, still ever so sweet.

Makoto shrugged her shoulders. Even for a child rejection didn't bother her too much. She just turned around and walked away—Yukia wondered if consequently she would lose interest in Ruri. But Ruri didn't seem like she was the type of girl to care.

"Run around where?"

"The beaches! Let's go see if we can salvage anything," she said.

"Alright," Yukia answered affably. "Sure, I can go with you. We'll take my bike."

Yukia retreated to his bedroom and quickly changed into a fresh pair of clothes—a regular pair of shorts and a t-shirt. He snagged a baseball cap and placed it over his messy hair as he quickly checked himself in the mirror.

He then headed back out, and finding that Ruri wasn't waiting for them, exited to the outside where he found her straddling his bike. As she leaned her body over the handlebars, he noticed how long and lean she was. She made him a bit nervous, and he averted his eyes as he approached and climbed on his bike.

She sat precariously on the tray behind him, and wrapped her arms around his waist.

"Let's go," she told him urgently, and he released the brakes and glided down the hill.

The sun was so amazingly bright and the weather was beautiful. Clouds drifted by in pleasant shapes, moved by the tender, cool breeze. The sea sparkled invitingly, and even the warm yellow sand which was littered with trash seemed agreeable.

Yukia took her down a little path that his father had shown him when he was little, and had taken him swimming. He recalled the memory with a fondness, as it had been the first outing that he and his dad had ever gone on. Somehow, a part of him nagged to show this to Ruri.

He brought the bike down the path and parked in the sand. Ruri flung herself off of the bike and then raced around, her long legs gracefully guiding her to wherever she wanted. Yukia smiled and carefully shuffled forward, allowing the tips of his toes to brush against the large piles of sand. Laughing, she flew her head backwards, placing her hands on her hips, and then looked back at Yukia.

"Come on, come on!" she cried out, her eyes sparkling as she grabbed his hand.

Yukia felt the warm touch of her hand and he blushed violently as she pulled him towards the water. The smell of the salt was strong today, and the tide was high. He had only walked a few steps in with her and found that his shorts were already dampening on the ends.

But Ruri was not phased by any of this. She waded deeper and deeper into the water, and her shorts that scarcely covered her pelvis to begin with were now almost completely submerged. Her wet t-shirt billowed out from under her like a long gossamer gown. She splashed around in the water and then plunged her head down; flung it back and droplets of the sea danced through the air.

"You're a strange girl," Yukia mumbled, embarrassed as he watched her from where he was. "And you should be careful too, so that you don't get any cuts on you. There could be broken glass in the water."

She laid herself on her back and smiled at him. "How about now? I'm not touching the floor." She kicked her feet, curving them as she did so, and returned to Yukia's side. She pursed her lips and looked up at him expectantly, but he could only stand there and stoically admire her beauty.

There wasn't a girl like her at his school.

There wasn't a girl like her in town.

Not in all of Honshu.

And there most certainly wasn't any other girl like her in Japan.

He knew, somehow from instinct, that Ruri was unique. She was special, and he knew that the moment he had set eyes on her, he had gotten sucked into her. And he wanted her, so desperately that it was in actuality quite sad.

Bored with him, Ruri returned to the beach and shook out her hair which was curling and crinkling from the water's ingredients. She sunk her toes into the sand and let out a happy sigh.

"Freedom!" she shouted, pumping the air and whooping. "Finally, freedom!"

"Freedom from what?" Yukia waded back to shore.

"Oh," she sucked in air through her teeth, "oh, just from… from everything!" she whirled around to face him, her eyes wide. "It seems that every one of my family has been choking me, you know? Trying to get me to go their own way. Like, if I had wanted to go to the beach, you know what my mother would have said? My father? Even my own aunt?"

"What?"

"They would have just told me to… to not go," she sputtered out.

He chuckled at the simplicity of her words. She placed her hands on her hips.

"I guess you don't see the point," she told him. "My point is, 'Why not?'"

"You sure are a strange girl…" he wandered away from her, examining some of the rubble.

"And you're a strange boy!" she cried out, clinging to his arm.

He felt her warmth press up against his side and he lowered his cap over his face in hopes that she could not see him blush.

"Tell me about yourself," she ordered. "I want to know all about you."

"There's not much to know." He pulled away from her and sidestepped over a fallen log.

"Oh come on, really? Okay, fine. Let me start. My name is Ruri Takada, and I am 21 years old. I live with my aunt because my parents were narcs who sent me away when I couldn't get into a college they wanted me to go to. I like punk rock and J-pop, and I'm from Akita, which I've grown up in my whole life. I have never been a straight A student, and I can't keep friends for very long."

She drew quiet then, suddenly. Yukia glanced back over his shoulder at her.

"Why is that?"

"Uh uh," she protested then, jerking her head up and looking him in the eyes. "No. You have to go now."

He chuckled. "I told you, nothing about me is really that interesting."

"Bull!" she cried out with laughter, socking him in the arm playfully. "You live with an unlicensed surgeon who evades the law for a living, _and _have two twin sistersand your life isn't interesting?"

"Alright." He sucked in air through his teeth. He didn't tell people this. But she should know. "When my _real_ mom got pregnant with me, my real dad took off. She moved in with my aunt and uncle, who treated her like dirt because she was going to have a bastard baby, and she also never did anything good for herself. She was a teenaged ne'er do well, you know? A little while after I was born, she was killed in a car crash. So I was raised by my aunt and uncle."

"This doesn't sound anything like your life."

"It's a long, boring story," Yukia added before continuing. "And my aunt and my uncle were a pair of evil bastards who did nothing but berate me, work me, and punish me in bizarre ways. One day, I was sent down to do something… and as I was crossing the road, a truck hit me. That's how my father met me. He performed an operation on me that saved my life, and instead of charging a super high fee, he convinced my aunt and uncle to sign over custody to him."

"Really!"

"Yeah, really," Yukia said, grinning. "My dad's pretty cool like that. He's a nice guy, but a lot of people make him out to be a monster, just because he charges so much for money. They have no idea what we've been through…" his eyes widened as scary memories from his early childhood and time with his parents came rushing back. "…no idea of what hell we've been through at all."

"So… bad childhood?"

"Oh no," Yukia protested, shaking his head. "No, but there was an incident… never mind, it's not really important. Anyways, my childhood was good. I spent it with a loving mother and father, a cool uncle, and rambunctious little sisters."

He stopped and looked at her, still grinning. "See? I told you I was boring."

"That is nowhere near as boring as my story!" she laughed.

And then she raised her arms to stretch to the sun and he noticed something very strange. The veins on her arms… a few of them looked damaged.

He chose to ignore this piece of evidence, and simply shook his head and kept on walking with her.

They spent the whole entire day together, travelling around that beach. They joked, they raced each other, they swam, and had elaborate, deep conversations that were stimulated with detail. When the sun was setting low on the horizon, Yukia grabbed his bike and started back up the hill with her. They walked the entire way back, as the sky bled orange and grapefruit pink, and the clouds became purple as they started their slumber.

When they reached the house and they parted ways, Ruri gave him a squeeze of his hand and a soft, sugary smile before she skipped off to do whatever. Reeling from the events of his day, Yukia stumbled into the house and mumbled pleasant hellos to those who walked by him. He glided to his room, on a high from being with Ruri, and slowly floated down onto his bed with a happy sigh.

"You went out with her, didn't you?"

Yukia groaned at the sound of Katsu's familiar voice. He grabbed his pillow and aimed it at his doorway, prepared to launch it at him.

"Seriously?" Yukia demanded. "What is it with you and coming into my room? You're not welcome in here!"

Katsu hobbled over to Yukia's window and examined the rows of books that he had on his shelves. The bookshelf stacked all the way from the bottom of the floor to the top of the wall, squished against the floor of the ceiling.

"Katsu," Yukia snapped, "what the hell are you doing in here?"

"Look," Katsu retorted, turning to face him. "You're the only doctor that we've got in town, and we all need you to stay focused."

"I am focused! What, I can't go out and have a little fun?"

"You can't go out and do drugs," Katsu said in a low, grave voice. "Those women told me about Ruri. She's a smack addict. She was kicked out of her parents' house and taken in by that old lady because that old lady needed someone to help her out."

"She has experienced some weight loss, and I have noticed that she has damaged veins from where she's used needles," Yukia responded. "But honestly? Heroin in this town? There isn't any. We're all white picket fences and picture perfect little families."

Yukia laid his pillow underneath his back. "She's in remission."

Katsu's eyes narrowed. "So you know what she's been doing to herself and yet you don't even _care_? She didn't tell you, and you don't _care_?"

"It's not for me to ask. I barely know her."

Katsu set his jaw. "If I were you, I'd be keeping your drugs locked up at night. Who knows what she'd do with them?"

"Well she's not going to be doing anything with them because she's in remission," Yukia protested hotly. "And plus, patients sleeping in there will notice if someone walks in through the door at night and rummages through the cupboards."

"You are so stupid, Hazama! The girl is bad news!"

"I don't recall asking you for your advice," Yukia hissed, glaring at him. "Since we're not friends. So how about you get the hell out of my room?"

Katsu squared his shoulders as if preparing himself not to move. Yukia stood up, equally strong in his power.

"I said for you to get the hell out. Go."

Katsu cast him a warning stare as he exited. Yukia slammed the door shut and locked it, then flung himself back onto his bed. He was exhausted, he was bummed out that he had come off of his high…

And he was even more so bummed out that Ruri, his new crush, had more skeletons in the closet than she was ever going to be willing to tell him about.


	8. Chapter Seven

When Yukia finished taking care of the well-recovering citizens of the town, he would spend the majority of his time with Ruri. Makoto and Haruna would want to tag along too, so their afternoons were mainly spent babysitting. But Ruri didn't seem to mind—she kept those sparkling eyes of hers trained on Yukia as they exchanged jokes and friendly conversations.

Katsu even joined them at one point, as his leg started to get better and better. Even though he had damaged an artery and consequently lost a lot of blood, he was amazingly fast in his road to retribution. He would hobble along behind them at a distance, when Haruna didn't want to walk beside Ruri.

Like Katsu, Haruna also did not like Ruri and therefore did not trust her. She found the girl's appearance to be unappealing and almost alarming in some ways, like there were light bulbs flashing in her head that read, _Not normal! _And so, she only followed her brother and Ruri on these walks because she wanted to protect him from her. Even though she was seven years old, she was brave, and even more so, cunning.

The little rag-tag group would abandon their home to go and spend their days down at the beaches. They would salvage things from the wreckages—electronics, sometimes whole pieces of furniture, and the occasional bauble that proved to be valuable. Katsu spent all his time salvaging, so much that Yukia suspected that he was actually afraid of the water.

_But who wouldn't be? _Yukia wondered inside of his head, the image of the monster flashing through his mind. He shuddered his shoulders and looked over to where Ruri held Makoto in her arms, swinging her back and forth.

"1, 2, 3!" Ruri chanted, and then she threw Makoto's body forward.

Makoto bubbled up from the water, laughing as she moved her purple hair from her eyes. She and Ruri splashed each other playfully and kicked around. Haruna stood in the shallower end of the water, her eyes closed as she felt the sun warm her face. She felt a presence behind her and instinct told her that it was Yukia.

"What's the matter, Haru?" Yukia asked, bending over to get on eye level with his sister. "Don't you want to go and play?"

"Not really." Haruna's fingers trimmed the water neatly, creating small little ripples.

Yukia rolled his eyes at his sister's odd behavior and then charged after the two girls, who shrieked when they saw him coming and started crying out, "Shark! Shark!" as they swam away from him. Katsu remained on the beach, watching with an almost longing look on his face, and then he glanced down at his leg and grimaced. He shook his head and tried to pry apart two boards which hid away a couple of boxes.

"Katsu-kun," he heard Haruna quietly call out to him. He turned around to see the little girl cautiously returning to the shore.

"Katsu-kun, why don't you want to get in the water?"

"I don't want to wreck my bandages," he grumbled, glaring at the suddenly obnoxious little girl.

Haruna plopped down on the sand beside him and almost like a faithful cat, kept him company as he rummaged around. She watched as her brother, sister and the strange girl play around for a long time, until Ruri and Yukia charged onshore and practically dragged her and Katsu into the water.

Shouting refusals and imposing death threats, Katsu was ignored as he was pushed into the water. He bubbled up and sat in the shallow end, grouchy as ever as he watched them all play and swim. Haruna was now laughing and joining in on the fun, just as a young girl should be.

Then, as the sun was setting low on the horizon and streaked the clouds with the colors of a beautiful sunset, the five of them packed up their things and returned back to the house, where apparently, something had gone terribly awry.

Kiriko was standing on the porch, his sharp gaze furiously searching for Yukia, until he set eyes on him.

"You!" Kiriko yelled, approaching his nephew at a hostile pace. "I was just about to begin looking for you."

"Relax, Uncle," Yukia said, his mouth setting in a firm line.

"Do you honestly have to be out and away every day?" Kiriko demanded, following Yukia back into the house. "We don't need any of you getting injured, especially you, Yukia."

"What do you need?" Yukia demanded, now equally as irritated as his uncle.

"We had a man show up here. He had a few broken bones that needed set, which I graciously did so for you. He said that he was looking for Ruri." Kiriko indicated with a nod of his white head to the girl who stood there, doe eyed as she surveyed the two.

A man suddenly glided to his feet from where he was sitting in the armchair. He was a handsome but scraggly middle aged man, with a cleft chin and thick eyebrows that set low over his eyes. His face was riddled with scars and thickened with scraggly stubble that threatened to grow into a beard. While this man was clearly Japanese, he was also incredibly tall and broad shouldered. He was bigger than Katsu, who was looking a bit astounded by this man's appearance. Yukia assumed that he was her father, but he was proven wrong when Ruri said:

"Taro!" Ruri's voice escaped her in a whisper.

She approached him, but didn't rush into his arms. Yukia was somewhat shocked, and a bit irked that she was addressing this man by his first name and no honorific. He couldn't have possibly been her older brother—he was about twenty years older than she was!

Haruna ducked behind Yukia's legs, as did Makoto, who kept her eyes curiously focused on the man. Gaze burning, Haruna seemed to understand somehow, that this man was not a nice one. She could feel her brother's body equally as tense as she was.

Taro settled his gaze on her and showed no emotion. He did not smile. He did not even show any sort of concern for her well being. He settled a hand on her shoulder but she pushed him away, and then nervously turned to face the group.

"T-this is Taro," she stammered. "He's my…" her eyes flickered to Yukia's and then settled on Kiriko, "…a friend of mine from Akita."

"A friend, hmm?" Skeptically, Katsu arched a brow at her.

"Yes, only a friend." Ruri stepped away from him more so, and smiled at Yukia, who had lowered his gaze.

Taro looked at her with an undetectable glint in his eyes. "I heard about the storm and came as soon as I could."

"Oh?" Ruri twirled a strand of streaked hair around her finger. "Have the roads started clearing up?"

"No. I was on my way out from Akita to see you when the storm hit. I drove out here with my truck. But…" he trailed off and looked at the group. "I suppose that I did see some cars pulling in. So I'm assuming that the roads to here have finally been cleared off."

Kiriko's face brightened. "Oh, well that's good! Aid is on the way then, hmm?"

"…Yeah. I suppose."

Yukia, bored with the conversation, nodded and headed to his room, ignoring the calls of his uncle to return. He entered, slammed the door shut and then drifted over to the window, pondering how exactly he was going to have to compete with Taro for Ruri. It was so obvious to him that he wanted her back. Judging by the size of him, he would do anything too.

Yukia gulped.

Love was tougher than he ever thought it would be.


	9. Chapter Eight

One mid afternoon a few days after Taro had shown up, Yukia's twin sisters and the other neighborhood kids headed down to the beach for an afternoon of play time and fun that was free from grownups.

Yukia had spent the few days previous avoiding Ruri and submerging himself in his work, doubling the amount of time that he spent with his patients and thus improving his bedside manner. Many of his patients, he found, while still needing more rehabilitation, were recovering quite splendidly, and he was allowing them more freedoms and cutting back on their medication. He found that what Taro had said about cars moving in to be true: aid had arrived yesterday to their town and was slowly circulating around. However, the highways were still backed up.

After checking his last patient, which was Ruri's aunt, Yukia felt slightly down in his mood. He wrote new statistics on her chart and then drifted over to the window, where he sat down at the desk with a heavy sigh. For the first time since the typhoon, the skies were beginning to look cloudy again. The boy who was manning the radio outside said that rain was to be expected, and the nervous townspeople had been bustling about since that morning. Outside, Kiriko had witnessed them hanging tarps over their cramped settlements, or packing up their things and retreating to the town to help with the cleanup. So far, no doctor or cop had shown up to reprimand Yukia for his services to the injured, but both Yukia and his uncle were well anticipating it.

Yukia heard a rap on the door and he glanced over his shoulder and turned around. Ruri was standing there in the doorway, smiling shyly at him. But what was that swimming in her eyes—guilt? Today she was wearing what looked to be a plaid shirt, but it was overgrown and baggy on her small undefined body. Yukia narrowed his eyes at it as he recognized that the size of the shirt could only belong to a man as big as Taro. He swallowed as impure thoughts of the two of them together began to swim in his mind, and he turned his back to her.

"Yukia?" her little feet padded on the floor to him. "Yukia, what's wrong?"

"Your boyfriend is what's wrong."

"He's not my boyfriend. He's just… he's my ex, yeah."

Yukia flipped through some papers, stacking them and neatly organizing them as he tried to appear uncaring. Ruri smiled devilishly, pressing a finger against her lips.

"Oh I see." She draped her arms around his neck and pushed up close to him. "You like me, don't you Yukia?"

Yukia jolted in response to her question and his face instantly bled red as he stammered, "N-no!"

"Uh huh. Yukia, look. Whatever was between me and Taro is totally one hundred percent over. So. Do you want to go on a walk with me?" she suggested.

"I suppose," he answered, wiping his sweating palms on his thighs.

He followed after her out the door, and as he stared at her while she walked ahead of him, he couldn't help but wonder…

What was it exactly that he was drawn to about her? Her beauty? Her wildness? All he knew was that he was insanely attracted to her, although his mind knew that she spelled out danger for him. Danger, and certainly heartbreak.

But when she turned her head at him and gave him that winning smile of hers, it melted all of the fear and the doubt away. When he locked eyes with her, he felt like they were suspending themselves in each other. It was an intoxicating, wonderful feeling.

Ruri halted at the edge of the cliff side and gazed out over the beach. She nodded to Yukia and he came closer to the edge beside her.

"Looks like your little sisters are down there playing," she said to him.

Yukia watched his sisters cautiously. "They really aren't supposed to be down there without a parent."

"Well, didn't your uncle let them go?"

"Maybe one of the kids' mothers," Yukia mumbled.

Ruri then suddenly gasped and Yukia's eyes snapped slightly upwards from his little sisters, to where a big pile of rubble was. Two little boys appeared to be climbing on it. One stood at the top, triumphantly posing, while the other wrestled the heap to get to the top.

"Hey!" Yukia yelled out furiously. "You kids are going to hurt yourselves!"

Ruri and Yukia rushed towards the path that led down to the beach and took off running for the heap. The little boy that stood at the top stuck out his tongue at his even younger brother, who whined and screamed primitive insults at him as he struck forward with a burst of energy. Reaching for his brother, who sidestepped out of the way, he slipped his foot forward. He couldn't catch his balance, and from a 4.6 meter tall heap of trash—

He fell.

The little boy shouted as his body started to straight fall downwards, and then suddenly Haruna rushed forward.

She stretched out her hands and her fingers twitched violently, as if they did not belong to her. Yukia watched intently as the muscles and bones in his sister's hands strained themselves, and saw that Haruna's eyes were even whiter than they were before. The boy had now been suspended in mid air, and he frowned in confusion.

Haruna then gently swept one hand underneath the other and the boy came to stand on the ground on both feet. His sibling came scrambling down the pile successfully. All of the kids began to crowd excitedly around Haruna, jabbering at her while she blushed and looked slightly distressed. But she smiled and feigned ignorance as she answered, "I don't know," to each of their questions, leaving them to think that what they had just seen was a fluke.

But Yukia and Ruri knew better. Yukia almost glared at his little sister he was so concerned. He stepped forward, grabbed her arm, and then began to walk away with her.

"Haru," he said then, grabbing her shoulders firmly, "what did you just do?"

"Magic." She blinked at him, waving her little fingers in the air. "I've always been able to do magic."

She made a pouting face, the face that her and Makoto would make if they thought that they were going to get into trouble. Yukia narrowed his eyes at his little sister.

"Haru," he said slowly, carefully, "you can use psychokinesis?"

"What's that?"

"It's what you just did. Manipulating objects using your mind." Yukia tapped his skull as a gesture, even though she could not see it.

"Oh. Well I guess so."

Realization spread across Yukia's face and it brightened. "Haru. Were you the reason why our house remained intact?"

Haruna remained silent so then Yukia repeated the question. Slowly, almost unsure of herself, she nodded in response to her brother's question.

"I just wanted the house to stay. So I thought, 'Stay, house, stay.' And then I thought about how mad that Papa would get if his stuff was moved, so I thought, 'I hope Papa's stuff will be okay.'" Haruna shrugged her shoulders, as if her power was something that was a normal everyday thing.

Yukia smiled at his sister. She was too little to realize the great power that she had. So she hadn't been born truly disabled. In actuality, his sister had been born stronger than them all.

He looked up and saw Ruri waving over at him and saying that the little boy was alright, and that he didn't even sport a scratch. Yukia nodded, and then, taking Haruna's hand again, he led her back to the kids, and for the rest of the day, he and Ruri monitored their play.


	10. Chapter Nine

Black Jack lulled awake, feeling the familiar warmth of his wife against his chest. It had to have been over a week now since they had left home. He didn't feel any stiffness in his joints this morning, and was grateful for it. Though while his joints didn't ache, his mind did. He had spent so much time worrying about their children that it gave him a bit of a headache. He quietly slipped out from underneath his dozing wife and pulled on some clothes, then went to fetch the breakfast and paper that the hotel had to offer.

When he came back, he heard the distinct sound of someone weeping. He entered the room, and saw Pinoko was still curled up in the bed, but he could tell it was her by the fact that her shoulders were shaking.

Stoically he set down the paper, coffee and muffins he had taken on a counter, and then went over to see what the problem was. Pinoko raised her head, and he saw that her eyes were pink and puffy, like she had been crying for a while.

"Pinoko…" he murmured. "What's wrong?"

"I'm so worried about them!" she cried out, wiping away her tears. "I haven't heard from them in days! I had a nightmare that one of them was dead!"

She flung herself at her husband's chest and he held her tightly while she sobbed. He couldn't blame her for having these thoughts, as they weren't irrational and he had been having them himself. The thought of coming home to one of his family members dead was a nightmare that he had long relived in his sleep and subconscious since his childhood, with the death of his mother.

"Pinoko," he raised her head with his fingers, so that she looked him directly in the eyes. "Put on your clothes and have some breakfast. We're going to try to go back today."

"B-but they haven't let anyone go all week."

"Exactly. It's ridiculous at this point. We have to go home. I'll buy someone off if I have to," Black Jack grumbled. "We'll try."

Pinoko's face instantly lightened and she dashed over to snag a muffin off of the counter. Black Jack exited into the bathroom, and when she bit into the muffin, she found that it was concealing some chocolate chips. She smiled warmly. After all this time, he had gotten pretty used to making her happy.

They pulled up to the harbor that they had been the day of the storm, and left the car parked by the side of the road. Black Jack strolled down to where some of the dock workers were, and Pinoko followed behind him. As he conversed with the workers to try to find a captain of a ship, he flashed them some wads of cash that he had covered in his cloak to show that he would compensate them for their information. After fifteen minutes of bribing he had found a captain to a small, but sturdy little boat that waited at the far end of the dock.

The captain was equally small and sturdy as his boat. He was even shorter than Pinoko, and stout, built round like a barrel. He was older than they were, as he sported white hairs that burst out of the neckline of his striped shirt. He crossed his arms and nodded as he listened to Black Jack's explanation for as to why they had to return home.

"Yes, I can take you," the man finally decided after Black Jack had finished. "I can bring your car along too. Of course…" his eyes shone. "…for a price."

"Of course." Black Jack handed over what must have been close to a half a million yen. "Will this be able to cover everything?"

The man nodded, snatching the cash and running his fingertips through it as he listened to it smacking together crisply. He grinned at Black Jack.

"It'll do."

Kiriko, Yukia, and Makoto hovered around the kitchen table where Haruna was patiently sitting, biting her lip. Yukia had explained the events of the previous day to his uncle, establishing that Haruna was responsible for keeping their house together. Unable to believe this, Kiriko had then instructed Haruna to demonstrate some of her skill in the kitchen.

"These silverware here." Kiriko rattled the dishes that were in the sink. "Pick them up, and set them on the counter." He patted the counter's surface loud enough so that she would know where to set them.

Haruna turned her head in the direction of the sound. With more of an ease than she had had yesterday, she swept her fingers along and in response, the utensils settled themselves where her uncle had indicated. Kiriko's eyebrows rose.

"Astounding."

Yukia smiled, and then nudged his uncle out of his star-struck trance. "Uncle, do you have any idea what could have caused this?"

"Yes." Kiriko's thin eyebrows settled low on his face. "She got it from her mother."

"From _Mama_?" Yukia and the girls cried out.

Kiriko nodded and then settled down in one of the chairs. He gave a flourish of his hand that suggested for Yukia and Makoto to sit down. They obediently did so.

"Girls, you don't know the story of how your parents met," Kiriko said, and he cast a glance at Yukia. "And Yukia, I don't suspect you know much either."

"She's always been his assistant," Yukia protested, arching a brow. Then he shook his head. "Has… Hasn't she?"

"Your mother was a twin born from what is called a teratgenous cystoma. When she was in your grandmother's womb," Kiriko explained, "she was absorbed by her other twin. Consequently so, her sister carried her for 18 years, with a large tumor distending from her body. And the reason why they couldn't remove it was because it could mentally attack any who tried to cut it."

"What?" Makoto sputtered in disbelief. "I don't believe this!"

"Why do you think there are pictures of when your mother was your age, and then the age she is now, but there are no in betweens?"

"Well…" Makoto fumbled, "because—"

"—Your mother is who she is. Your father and her only met because doctors arranged for her to be removed from her sister's body. Your father encountered the same problems as had other surgeons before him, but he promised to save her. And thus, your mother, being underdeveloped in many ways, was put in the artificial body of a young girl."

"Then why is she… 'developed?'" Yukia questioned, putting air quotes around the final word.

Kiriko shrugged. "I don't know exactly the reason behind that, but I suspect that it has something to do with your father being a pushover and your mother being madly in love with him. After all, she couldn't very well marry your father when she looked the way she originally did."

Haruna's little voice then squeaked.

"So… I get these powers from Mama?"

"You must. I suppose it's genetic."

Makoto pouted. "How come I don't get something so cool?"

"Ah, see, that's what I can't grasp," Kiriko responded, holding up a finger to Makoto. "When your mother was put into the original body she was in, she lost her powers. Makoto, you are in a sense, biologically perfect. Your sister is blind, so perhaps…" he turned to face the wall. "…Perhaps your body and your mother's had evolved to a point where when their bodies were disabled, they could find another way to get around their disability. You can't see, Haruna, so maybe that's why you have your powers. If we were to give you new corneas, you might lose them…"

"Or," Yukia said, narrowing his eyes at his uncle, "it has nothing to do with her being disabled, and things to do with her genetics. She got a mutation or recessive gene that Makoto didn't get. After all, they aren't identical twins. Also, we have no idea if Makoto doesn't have any powers. She could just not have developed them yet."

"I suppose such things could come with the onset of puberty," Kiriko agreed. "And yes, those theories are more rational than mine, but with such an irrational situation… well, it's best to consider all possibilities."

Yukia then placed a hand on his little sister's shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"Haruna. You know that you shouldn't really use your powers in public, right?"

"Well… yes." She sounded somewhat sad. "I know that it can scare people. But all I was trying to do was help Atsu—"

"—Yes, yes, I know. And that's very good of you. That's what you should use your powers for." Yukia nodded to her, his smile praising her. "But other than saving people, don't use them outside of this house or in the company of other people."

"'Kay," Haruna murmured reluctantly, but Yukia could tell that she wasn't going to rebel against this order.

Makoto and Haruna then ran off to play, and Yukia and Kiriko remained in the kitchen alone. Many of the women had already returned back to the town with their families to help with the cleanup. A few still remained here, having found absolutely no home to return to, and absorbed more territory to camp in. Till his parents returned, Yukia had decided that they would remain welcome.

Kiriko bustled over to where the utensils were lying, and with a sigh, he set them back down in the sink to be cleaned and dried for later.

"I do wonder when your parents are coming home… but with the telephone lines still being broken, we're likely to not know yet."

Yukia shrugged his shoulders in response, having nothing to say. Kiriko glanced over his shoulder and sighed. The wrinkles on his face were more defined, and they showed his old age.

"Yukia, we should have a talk about that girl you've been hanging around with."

"You mean Ruri?"

"Yes, Ruri. Who else?"

"Uncle, there's nothing that you need to be concerned about. She's a nice girl."

"She's a drug addict."

"She's recovering, though," Yukia protested, his voice taking on a defensive edge.

Kiriko sat down at the kitchen table and propped his chin up on his fist, and examined his nephew with a very frank gaze.

"Why do you think that that Taro man showed up?"

"…I don't know. I guess he was trying to get her back."

"I wouldn't be surprised if he was actually a dealer," Kiriko hissed. "And that kind of trouble is something I don't want you to be involved in. Understand?"

Yukia narrowed his eyes at his uncle and crossed his arms, leaning back against the post of the doorway. He focused his eyes on the floor.

"I know that you like this girl, Yukia, but I'm very concerned. Taro hasn't been talking to anybody but her, and that's the only time he's been seen. He's a stalker of the shadows."

"Then Ruri isn't the problem!" Yukia blurted out. "It's Taro! Look, I can tell Taro to hightail it—"

"—She has nowhere else to go. Her house is destroyed, and her aunt is terminally ill. She will leave with Taro, Yukia."

"That's… that's…"

"She cannot stay here with us. Even if she _wasn't _a drug addict, your parents would never agree to it. She's in her twenties."

Yukia slammed his fist into the wall. "I don't want to listen to this! I don't want to listen to you tell me that it's stupid or impossible or dangerous!" he turned on his heel and sped out of the kitchen.

As he exited onto the porch, he ran his hands through his unkempt black hair and paced across the floorboards.

"Yukia?"

Yukia turned and saw Ruri standing there, innocent, her eyes growing wide and sad with concern. She headed up the steps and touched his shoulder.

"Is there something wrong?"

"Na… Nothing. Just got in a fight with my uncle."

"Is is about Haruna's powers?"

"Y-yeah," Yukia lied, ducking his head. "That's all."

"Oh, okay," she murmured, taking a step back from him.

Yukia glanced up at her, and felt the blush in his cheeks rise before he even asked her the question.

"Do you want to go out for a walk with me tonight, Ruri-chan?"

Her face softened and her eyes sparkled. Those pink lips of hers pursed themselves into a smile. She gave him a curt nod.

"Yeah. I'll go on a walk with you, Yukia-kun."

That night, when evening settled down low on the world, Yukia headed outside to look for Ruri. He found that she was sitting on the porch steps waiting for him. Smiling, he descended the stair case.

"Ruri-chan?" he asked her, standing in front of her.

Ruri's head was lowered between her knees and her whole body slumped forward. Yukia frowned.

"Ruri? Is something wrong?"

"It's nothing." She stood up abruptly, and gave him a smile. He could tell that her eyes were red and had been puffy from crying. Or had she been crying and doing something else?

He chose to disregard those thoughts.

Bravely then, he took her hand and gave it a squeeze. "Come on. Let's go on a walk."

They started to stroll away from the house, and he found that she did not pull away from him. They were only drawn closer together. Their eyes watched the skies, which was a navy blue blanket dotted with patchwork stars—and they also glanced at each other, cautiously, as if they both wanted to say something that they couldn't.

They walked all the way down past the path that led down to the beach, and came to settle on a grassy knoll speckled with sand. It rested against the edge of the rock. A tree that had been there since Yukia was little now toppled sideways, it's roots clinging to the earth desperately though it was long dead.

"Ah," Yukia said in disappointment, as he saw that the creaking tree was destroyed. "That's a shame."

"Was that your hiding place when you were little?" Ruri giggled and settled herself down in the grass. She propped herself up on one arm and gazed up at him, her eyes sparkling mischievously. Yukia noticed that mischievousness and gulped a bit nervously. He sat down on the grass beside her and pulled his knees to his chest, listening to the rolling snore of the ocean. He felt her body snuggle up closer to him and he drew himself down beside her, his heart hammering in his chest.

They stared into each other's eyes, not saying anything, not needing to. This moment felt right. He reached out and with a tentative hand, stroked her hair. She closed her eyes and seemed to absorb these warm sweet feelings he was trying to inflict on her.

"You're too sweet, Yukia."

"T-thanks."

"But I know that they've told you about me."

"I don't care," he whispered hoarsely.

"You should."

"I just _can't_, Ruri. I look at you and I see… it's… I just see something that I can't live without." He leaned in and kissed her suddenly, passionately, desperately, and then…

She pushed him away.

She sat upright, and he mimicked her, scrambling upwards without another word. His lips tingled with the taste of Ruri's watermelon flavored gloss.

"Yukia, I can't do this with you. I'm _seven _years older than you—"

"—I don't care—"

"Yukia, you _should_!" her voice now had a reprimanding edge to it. Her eyes looked watery, like they were going to flood with tears and crash down. "You and I have got enough problems separately. Let's just… let's not make more problems being together."

"So…" he trailed off, his suddenly feeling enormously heavy. "You don't feel the same way, Ruri?"

"No, Yukia-kun. I'm sorry, but I don't."

Yukia stood up then, abruptly. He shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to relax his body. But with every beat of his heart it felt like he was slugging himself in his chest. Rejection hurt so, so bad. And yet he would not cry. He just turned on his heel and walked back to the house, leaving her behind there, in the grass where he had kissed her.


	11. Chapter Ten

Yukia kicked at a clod of dirt as he strolled back to the house, his hands shoveled in his pockets, his head hanging limp and low. He saw as it had gotten so late while they had been out, there was only one light on. He swallowed. It was probably Kiriko, waiting in the armchair with his thin lips pressed together, going to scold him as soon as he walked through the door.

The few moochers that they had out on the lawn were sleeping and lazing about. The remains of their fire were slowly burning down; red orb embers choking on the ashes that pressured them to go out. But as Yukia tried to head up the steps, he found that something was intercepting him. And his eyes widened when he recognized who it was.

Taro.

"Hey." Taro was chewing on something—probably tobacco, Yukia guessed. His muscular jaw moved and he twisted his lips to the side to spit out a wad of brown slimy cud into the darkness. "I saw you moving around with my girl. And I have to say, I don't like it all too much."

He strolled down the steps and Yukia took a defensive stance, parting his feet slightly.

"I see that you finally showed your face again," Yukia retorted, narrowing his eyes. "After going off and doing who knows what. You know, you never thanked my uncle for treating you."

"I've got better things to spend my money on than some euthanasia fanboy's shoddy job at fixing my arm," Taro snapped.

Yukia's eyes narrowed. "You take that back."

"Why? Aren't I telling the truth?"

"My uncle is a real doctor, you prick," he snarled, and even though he was smaller than Taro, he could hold his own. He stepped closer to him, sizing him up, ready to fight. "So take it back."

In response Taro cracked his knuckles and gave Yukia a shove. It instantly sent him sprawling into the dirt. With one arm he snatched Yukia up by his shirt collar and lifted him up above the ground. He cocked back one arm, ready to strike.

"Hey!" Yukia heard a familiar voice shout out aggressively. "You get your hands off of him!"

Yukia once again was sent flying through the air, tumbling back and forth on the ground with Taro, and when he looked up, he saw that Katsu was standing over the two of them, his black eyes lit like flames.

"Yukia!" his uncle shouted from within the house, and when Yukia looked up, he saw that his uncle was brandishing a shiny silver pistol.

Taro had taken the tackle to the ground hard. He grinded his teeth and cursed under his breath as he climbed to his feet, nursing his cast covered broken arm. Katsu defensively placed his body in front of Yukia's.

"This is his property. Whatever beef you've got with this kid, I'm not about to let you knock him down," Katsu snarled, his fingers flexing and closing themselves into fists. "So get your ass out of here."

Taro grumbled and threw daggers with his heated stare as he trudged back to his truck, which was waiting for him down at the end of the road. Kiriko kept the pistol aimed firmly on the truck as it coughed to life, and in a whirl of screeching tires and black dust, sped away into the night.

Katsu placed a hand on Yukia's shoulder. "Hey. You okay?"

Yukia shrugged off Katsu's hand and muttered, "I'm fine."

"Where's Ruri?"

Kiriko lowered the pistol and said nothing to his nephew as he held open the door for the two boys to go back inside. His cold demeanor said all the disapproval that he held. In the hallway to the bedrooms, the girls stood there in their nightgowns, looking obviously worried.

"Yukia?" they both echoed. "Yukia, are you okay?"

Yukia waved them off and his stern gaze told them that he wasn't in the mood for talking. But though his demeanor was intimidating, Katsu followed after him and into his room.

"Jesus, could you just _leave me alone_?" Yukia roared, whipping a pillow off of his bed and into Katsu's face.

Katsu let the pillow hit his face and he stood there, emotionless, as he surveyed Yukia.

"I take it she rejected you?"

"Shut the hell up!" Yukia shoved him out of the room and slammed the door shut.

He leaned back against the wall and wiped away the few droplets of sweat that were beginning to perspire on his face. He wrenched open his window and allowed some of the cool night air to drift in.

_I'm just a kid! Just a stupid, defenseless kid. _He pulled off his shirt over his head and carelessly tossed it to the ground. _And that's all I'll ever be to her. _


	12. Chapter Eleven

Yukia woke up the next morning as groggy as he normally was, but he could instinctly detect that there was a presence in the room with him. He saw his uncle, standing up against his door, looking rather grim. He had his arms crossed, and his features looked even whiter than they normally were.

"Get up, Yukia." He tossed him his clothes.

Yukia began pulling on the clothes over his pajamas, not bothering to take them off. He kept one eye focused on his uncle, who was readjusting his eye patch, fussing with it uselessly.

"Uncle? What's wrong?"

Kiriko sighed. "There's been an accident."

Yukia froze, all of his nerves sharpening, tensing, and he could feel all of his hair stand up on end. He whipped his blankets off of his bed and started crying out repeatedly as he rushed to the porch. He ran down the steps and snatched his bike away from the side, and climbed onto it. He felt his uncle put a hand on his shoulder and grab him firmly, as if trying to pull him off of it.

"It's too late, Yukia."

"What happened?!"

"…From what I can gather, she was on her way back here and he picked her up. He had heroin… And he was driving. He crashed into a farmer's truck as he was passing through the town… The two were dead when the cops got there. But they say that her cause of death was the fact that she had been clean, and she had OD'd…"

"NO!" Yukia screamed, horrified. "No! She's not dead! Ruri cannot be dead!"

Kiriko's impassive eyes were etched with traces of deep sympathy. "Yukia. The coroner already called her in."

"I can bring her back!" Yukia kicked his bike and it crashed to the ground. "I can bring her back, Uncle, please, let me just try—"

"No," he responded rigidly. "There is nothing more you can do."

"Oh God…" he collapsed to his knees, choking on the lump that was rising in his throat. "I… I left her alone out there, Uncle, it's all my fault… she wouldn't… she wouldn't have…"

"I know," Kiriko agreed sullenly, even though he didn't.

Yukia buried his face in his hands. "It's all my fault!"

And he screamed and cried into the dirt, and though his screams peaked in pitch, there was nothing that he could do to erase the past. He hadn't just not earned Ruri's love.

He would _never_ earn it.

As the town cleaned up after the tragic little incident, Yukia once again used his familiar room as a shell, holing himself away and burying himself in his misery. Kiriko frequently checked in on him over the next couple of days, notifying him coolly that he should do his rounds with his patients, but Yukia would not move. He wouldn't even eat, and he was skinny enough as it was.

The third day that Yukia had not emerged from his room and his uncle once again came calling to no avail, Kiriko had sighed heavily and morosely lamented over his nephew's estate.

"Is the boy who was so eager to be a surgeon, who was so determined to help people, gone?"

"I'm just a kid, Uncle." He had sat there soberly, gazing out the window at the rising sun.

"You're stronger than you think," Kiriko reprimanded him wantonly.

He left this morning's breakfast on top of his office desk, and then pulled away the previous night's dinner that had grown stale, lumpy and cold. Yukia cast a glance over the carelessly prepared breakfast which smelled awful. He scrunched up his nose and wondered what the hell they had done to the rice.

Now heeding to his stomach's screaming demands, he stumbled to his feet, weak from a combination of lack of sleep and food, and carried himself over to his desk. He plopped down in his chair with a heavy sigh and grimacing, pulled the food to his chest and feebly lifted a pair of chop sticks, as well as the bowl.

His fingers met on the bottom of the bowl with a crinkle, and he found that there was a sticky note attached to the other side of it. On it, in blue pen, there was a message scrawled.

"Get well soon!" it read, and was signed first by Katsu, then by his little sisters. Yukia smirked. The word "soon" had been spelled wrong, and it had been penned by Katsu, judging from his signature. He flipped it over and found more words on the back of it.

_Think that this is the worst my cooking can get? Don't hold your breath. _

_Get out of your goddamn room. _

_Katsu_

This actually brought Yukia a chuckle, rumbling his aching chest, and it stunned him. Bitterly he crumpled up the note and swept it off of his desk and into the trash with the side of his hand. He leaned back in his chair and contemplated things while he ate the bowl of rice.

_If you would just go home already, _Yukia thought, rolling his eyes.

If the pain would just stop.

If the regret would just go away.

If somebody could tell him how to get over this and move on, he'd do it. One simple fix. One simple cure. An operation. A medication. Anything that would make her memory just flee from his mind, as if she was just nothing more than a gust of wind blowing by.

He pressed his knuckles into his eyes. No. That wasn't it. He didn't _want _to forget Ruri. Ruri was sweet. Amazing. Beautiful. But terribly misguided. He didn't try hard enough. He had gotten rejected, and he had reacted as a small child would have if it didn't get ice cream after behaving badly.

_The reason why she would see me as a child is because I've always acted as a child_, Yukia's mind growled aggressively.

He moaned and his body slumped forward, and he buried his face in his hands as his head started to ache.

Rain came and hovered over their little town that morning. It pounded and poured down on the roof top, rattling the shingles. It ran down the window hurriedly before dropping off onto the ground, like tear drops off of eyes. Finally the weather was beginning to abide to Yukia's mood.

About an hour later, a visitor entered his room but it wasn't Kiriko. It was Katsu, sent to retrieve the dishes. He limped forward with his bad legs and snatched the rice bowl. He turned his head and stared at Yukia's body, which was tilted towards his window, wrapped around in his blankets. The boy was wide awake.

"Did you read my note?" he asked with a grunt in his voice, turning to face Yukia.

"Go home."

"I have no home to go back to."

"They're cleaning up the town. You should help."

Katsu clenched his teeth. He smirked a bit. "Well, with my bad legs I can get out of doing anything strenuous. Besides, you're in no position to tell me to do anything."

Flaming, Yukia kicked his blankets onto the floor and sat upright, his eyes flashing.

"No right? Not in that position?" he demanded, rising to his feet. "You aren't my patient anymore! You're just someone that owes me almost a million yen!"

"I thought we were friends." Katsu protested stiffly.

"Friends? You made me _miserable! _Are you kidding me? Friends? Why would I ever want to be friends with you?" Yukia scoffed, shaking his head in disbelief and picking up his blankets off of the floor. "I don't need any friends, especially not one who can't even spell 'soon!'"

He looked over and saw that Katsu had recoiled slightly in disgust. His face betrayed emotions of offense, like he had been hurt by this. Katsu then threw the bowl onto the floor. It being ceramic, shattered.

"I'm tired of your shit!" Katsu screamed at him. "Haven't you noticed? I'm _grateful _for you, you asshole! I get that I bullied you, but maybe this experience has been an eye opener for me! And did you ever think that the reason as to why I stick around is because I _like _being around your family? That I _like _you, as a person? Or does that not matter to you unless I've got huge tits and a pretty face?"

Yukia sat on the edge of his bed, speechless and blown away by Katsu's words. His mouth was dry, and his brain felt fuddled again, as he tried to realize and understand what Katsu was saying.

"That girl didn't even _care _about you, Yukia! You were her toy, her play thing! Her next interesting thing to do! And you barely knew her! You should not feel so much guilt over losing her, Yukia. You shouldn't feel bad that she rejected you." He rested on the bed beside Yukia, earnestly and concernedly gazing at him. "Yukia… I… I want to do anything that I can to help you. You helped me. Please just let me help you."

"She did care," Yukia grumbled. "She cared about me. And I don't want any of your help."

Katsu's eyes flashed. He was wounded.

"I thought I respected you. I thought I… I…" he bit on his lip and shook his head. He jumped to his feet, and slammed his fist into the door as he strode out of the room.

Yukia then fell to his knees and began to pick up the little swirled shards off of the floor and placed the jagged pieces in his palm. They were like a puzzle piece, all these little jagged bits, and it reminded him of his life. How many pieces there were. How they all fit in. He examined an awkwardly shaped chunk and in his mind flashed Katsu's face. No. Katsu did not belong anywhere in his life. He was rude, he was inconsiderate; he was abrasive and brash and a bully and a brat and…

Actually possessed a shred of empathy in that muscular, thick body of his.

For the first time in days he exited his room and entered the kitchen. He dumped the shards in the trash can and clapped the dust off of his hands. Kiriko, who was sitting at the table finishing up his cup of morning coffee, allowed himself to smile for Yukia.

"Glad to see you're up. You pissed off your friend, though."

"He's not my friend."

Kiriko propped his chin up on his hand. "Look, I know that that kid has been a brute and has pushed you around a lot, but he seems like he's a keeper."

"He's not a keeper," Yukia snapped in retaliation. "I'm going back to bed."

"Uh uh." Kiriko's long spider-like legs lifted him from his seat and blocked off the entryway into the kitchen. He crossed his arms and cocked a brow at Yukia. "You've given up on your chores long enough for three days. Your sisters went outside to play. I told them not to wander too far off, but you know how Makoto is…"

Yukia blinked, and glanced outside. Thunder rumbled threateningly and lightening was blurred into an obscure yellow line by the torrent of rain.

"They went out to play in the rain again?" Yukia headed over to the door and pulled on his raincoat. "I would have thought that Haruna would be too terrified to do anything in this kind of weather."

Kiriko's eyes then widened with recognition. "Hmm. You're right, this could be rather bad." He snatched his coat off of the hook too. "Maybe I should go with you. Haruna could have run away and hid herself somewhere."

Yukia exited the house and the cool wind nipped at his cheeks harshly. He glanced over the edge of the cliff and saw that the waves were reacting crazily.

"How could you let them go out in this?" Worry was now unveiling itself in Yukia's voice. He proceeded down the pathway and scoured the beaches, which were darkened by the rain. Junk was being swirled into the water. But he couldn't see any of his sisters.

He jogged out a little ways and Kiriko trudged along behind him to take a more careful look at the area. Yukia opened his mouth and screamed out for his sisters, but the thunder and lightening deafened him and his voice.

All at once a strand of lightening twirled down from the sky and ricocheted off of the earth, not too far away from where Yukia was standing. In the distance, he could see it. And he knew where the girls were, as screams rose up and the sound of a sickening crash could be heard.

Yukia raced over to where the tree was, screaming as the mud splashed all over his clothes. He saw that the uprooted tree had toppled over the edge, dragging mud with it against the wall.

"Haruna! Makoto!" he screamed, sliding down the tree. He couldn't see them.

He felt the tree sliding underneath him and heard the snapping of the roots as the mud lubricated it, speeding it over the edge with the rain.

"Oh God," Yukia cried out.

He flung himself into the water, and could see nothing but maddening blackness and mud. Nameless things clung to him, making his spine tingle with fear. And then he saw the body of a girl tumbling through the water like a forgotten rag doll. He launched himself forward, spiraling through the water and swept her in his arms, surfacing. The waves crashed around them. The two of them coughed furiously.

"Mako!" he cried out, his heart slightly relieved.

Makoto was crying and gasping for breath and he could see that she was seriously injured. He swam over to a sliver of beach and set her down gently, then plunged back into the water to look for Haruna. He examined the surface of the water and the area around the tree, but could not find her. He then realized that the worst was possible. He dove down underneath the water again and felt around the bottom of the trunk, till he could feel the distinct fleshy part of someone's arm. He resurfaced, and he heard someone shout out.

"Yukia!"

He saw the familiar mass plunge down into the water, and knew that it was Katsu. Yukia's heart drummed with relief, and the two boys stared at each other.

"She's underneath the tree," Yukia called out over the din of the waves. "Help me push it off!"

They dove down underneath and shoved rocks underneath the trunk, wedging it up. Kicking and thrashing until they were breathless, they slammed themselves against the trunk to get it to budge. Yukia then snatched his little sister protectively to his chest. The two surfaced and Yukia slapped her cheeks, trying to get her eyes to open.

And it was like he was his father, all those years ago in the operating room, trying to get that helpless little baby to breathe. She was choking. She was dying.

"Oh God, Haru," Yukia felt the sobs choke his throat and his body suddenly felt extremely limp.

Katsu's arms wrapped around their waists and he hauled them to the shore. Kiriko had somehow managed to maneuver his way down there and he met them.

"Haru! Haru!" Yukia kept screaming into his little sister's blank face as she coughed and sputtered.

He pumped her chest, until the water came gushing out of her mouth like a river released from the floodgates. She coughed and cleared her lungs, but there was something still horribly wrong. She couldn't breathe properly. He felt her chest, and examined her quickly, and found that her ribs were definitely broken. A broken rib must have been puncturing her lungs.

"I have to operate!" he shouted to Kiriko and Katsu. "We gotta move her back to the house! Pronto!"


	13. Chapter Twelve

Yukia remained under the sun-bright lights of the operating room, holding up his hands protectively. Haruna's body laid limply on the table, all the proper machines hooked up to her. He was sweating nervously, and his eyes were bleary.

"Hey." He heard Katsu's voice, and he felt a dry towel tapping his forehead and removing the sweat.

He turned his head in astonishment and saw Katsu standing there beside him, wearing the same garb that he was. His eyes were narrowed.

"Do _not _make any male nurse jokes, because I will not hesitate to slug you."

"But after what I said—"

"—You need me, like it or not. So shut up and tell me what to do."

Yukia exhaled into his mask and outstretched his hand. "Scalpel."

Katsu obliged him and Yukia pointed the tip of the scalpel down, cutting open his sister. He was sickened by it, but he knew that he would do anything to save her life. He exposed her internal organs, and he heard Katsu mumble something about being sick behind him.

"If you're going to be sick, leave. You're not going to throw up all other my sister."

"No!" Katsu sneered in protest. "I can take it! I'm not a wuss."

Yukia rolled his eyes and then examined the left side of her body. He saw it, the little rib that was slicing up into her lung. He pushed it back down, and set the rib back into place. He then stitched up the small area, and cleaned it up.

"What are her readings?"

"Her what?"

"Never mind," Yukia rolled his eyes and sighed. "It's done. All I have to do is sew her up and suture."

Yukia ordered for the objects that would allow him to complete the task and he sewed up Haruna, cleanly closing the stitches and leaving no scar on her body.

"Br…Brother…"

He saw that her eyes were beginning to open, and though she was in incredible pain—there were bruises, swellings and cuts all over her body from where the tree had fallen on her—she still had a smile on her face.

"Am I going to be okay now?"

He smiled beneath his mask and squeezed her hand. "Yeah, sis. You're going to be okay."


	14. Chapter Thirteen

When Yukia stirred awake the next morning, he found that he was not in the room that he had grown accustomed to locking himself in; but in the living room, on the floor, curled up underneath a blanket. He could hear Kiriko shuffling around in the kitchen making coffee as his bleary eyes struggled to see. He stared out through the slits of his eyes and saw that Katsu was dozing in the armchair. He was snoring softly, and his mouth was open slightly, glistening moist with some drool.

Wrinkling his nose and somewhat confused, Yukia lifted himself halfway up, feeling the cool breeze of the morning drifting in through the window. He could see that some of the grass outside was sparkling with dew. And why wouldn't it, after last night's extensive rain? He felt something hot being shoved into his outstretched hands and saw a mug of coffee, coloured a milky brown from an obvious over dosage of cream and sugar. He smiled and lifted it to his lips and drank deeply.

Kiriko sat on the sofa behind him. "You and him came out of surgery, cleaned up, and then wound up crashing here on the floor last night."

_Typical of Katsu to take the comfiest chair, _Yukia thought with a cocky grin as he glanced back over at his friend.

"You're really lucky that he showed up. Otherwise…"

"Oh!" Yukia cried out, suddenly remembering what had happened. "The girls? Are they—"

"—Injured, yes. Makoto miraculously twisted her ankle. Lucky little thing. But Haruna has got three broken ribs, which I'm sure your parents are going to blame me for."

"You're the one that let them out in the rain."

"I didn't think they'd wander off and climb on top of an uprooted tree," Kiriko hissed, rolling his eyes in annoyance. "I've perfected a long lecture which I'll be sure to give them before they even get their breakfast."

Yukia chuckled. "I'm sure they'll like that."

"W…" Katsu then awoke, his aching head rolling from side to side as he tried to realign his spine. He blinked rapidly and stared at the two.

Kiriko sighed and lifted his creaky bones to their standing, and returned to the kitchen to retrieve another cup of coffee for Katsu.

"Did you sleep well?" Yukia asked, sipping from his mug as he stared at his friend.

"No! I've got the _worst _crick in my neck, all because of your crappy chair, Hazama. This thing isn't even comfortable."

"Of course." Yukia shook his head and set down his mug.

Katsu then grinned. "So your little sister is doing okay?"

"Both of them are, yeah. They're going to be fine."

"That was pretty awesome. Being a surgeon."

"_I'm _the surgeon."

"But I'm the assistant! Like, the most important part. If I wasn't there, you'd probably just be standing there with a scalpel, Yukia."

Yukia jerked his head to look at Katsu at the mention of his first name with no honorific. Katsu chuckled nervously, flustered; a blush spread across his cheeks like a fast sunrise.

They then heard the rumble of a car outside, and Katsu turned over his shoulder to look out the window.

"Hey, some freaky black car—"

"Mama and Papa!" Yukia cried out, scrambling to his feet and rushing over to the window.

The black car barely came up over the edge of the hill before Pinoko removed her seat belt and escaped from the vehicle, rushing towards the house at top speed. Yukia met her on the porch, and her arms swung out wide before she embraced him tightly. She kissed him, and she was laughing as she rocked him back and forth in her arms.

"Ohh, my little boy!" she murmured, pressing a fat kiss to one cheek. "Oh, thank goodness you're safe!"

"Took you long enough, Ma," Yukia replied with a chuckle, patting her on the back so that she would release him.

Yukia saw his father exit from the car and move to grab the suitcases from the trunk. He grinned, knowing that his dad wasn't one for big dramatic reunions.

"How was your trip?"

"_Awful! _We thought that you four were wandering around homeless! We couldn't even contact you because the phone lines were down!"

"They're starting to put them back up in town," Yukia answered, shoving his hands in his pockets.

His mother's face then looked concerned and she ran a hand through his hair. "Sweetheart, our house is still standing, but you look a wreck."

Yukia swallowed, remembering the list of injuries that his sisters had received. Then he also recalled Ruri's face, a image flashing through his brain that seared his mind. His face and demeanor softened, looking slightly defeated.

"Well… a lot has happened, Ma."

Pinoko was sure to reprimand her daughters for the actions that they chose to take, and she also gave Kiriko a short talking to for letting them go out in the rain. Yukia was glad that she didn't start up on the whole, "You're too young to perform operations," otherwise the whole return might've been a downer.

Black Jack only wanted to know how he had conducted the operations, and how much he had charged for each of them. Though he was cold and calculating most times, Yukia could see the concern that swam in his eyes, and knew that he had been genuinely worried for him. Yukia told him each answer truthfully, and although his father grumbled about it here and there, he didn't scold Yukia. He admitted to his son that he was proud of what he had done.

Pinoko had been reluctant about letting Katsu stay for dinner that night (given that he had bullied Yukia predominantly in the past), but she allowed him to upon Yukia's coaxing, and with what little was left in the kitchen, she made them a delicious, nutritious home cooked meal that they had all missed. Katsu's parents, who had returned to the town despite his father's injuries, also made it up the hill for the meal. Given that their table wasn't big enough, they all ate out in the living room, sitting topsy-turvy on chairs and the coffee table, laughing, rumbling and getting along as they never had before.

"Hey Yukia," Katsu addressed his friend, nudging him with his elbow. "Check all of this out. They're getting along mighty fine aren't they?"

Yukia smiled and surveyed the scene that laid in front of him. He elbowed Katsu back and murmured his agreement.


	15. Chapter Fourteen

For the first time in a long time, the Hazama family stayed at their home with no other guests, or squatters, and only Ruri's aunt remained in the examination room as a haunting reminder in Yukia's mind. He hadn't slept well that night, for he had overheard his father and Kiriko arranging for her to be taken into the care of some other hospital, as there was no one left who could pay the fee.

When she finally woke up, who would tell her where her niece had gone? That she had been killed in the cyclone? Or would they tell her the truth? Would she care? Questions swam through Yukia's head and though he examined each and every one of them logically, he found that he could not solve them.

By the second day that his parents had been home, the couple could detect that something was wrong with their son. Though he no longer moped in his room as he had before, there was something reclusive about him, almost humbler than he had been before. And he was shy enough as it was. At times when he wasn't doing anything, he would almost linger in the room, gentle and frigid, remembering something that cast shadows on his face. Though whatever he was upset about, he hid it and put on a brave face for them, and managed to smile when he was in their company at mealtimes.

Kiriko finally told them on the third day what had happened, and the two had listened with reactions of shock and sympathy (more so both on Pinoko's side.) They had taken the day to process this information before Pinoko had approached her husband in the evening.

She gave him a ginger touch on his shoulder, her lovely fingers curling around it while he brushed his teeth and stared at his reflection in the mirror. She reached up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek, which was grizzled from not shaving.

"You have to talk to him."

"Why should I do it?"

"Because, Kuro'o," she told him in a low voice, "you're the only one between us who has ever experienced this sort of thing. This kind of loss."

Black Jack sighed, rolling his head back onto his shoulders. She gave him a little squeeze.

"You don't have to do it tonight, just do it tomorrow," she murmured, running her hands through his hair. "Think about what you're going to say."

The next day, in the early morning before anyone else had woken up, Black Jack decided to go walking. After all, exercising was supposed to help relieve his R.A symptoms. He changed into what relaxing clothes he had, which starkly mismatched each other, and then ordered Yukia awake and moved him to change.

They then proceeded outside, down the porch steps and far away. They walked at an easy going pace, saying nothing but letting the gravel crunch and grind beneath their shoes.

"I heard about what happened. With the girl."

Yukia cringed and ducked his head. Black Jack glanced over at his son.

"I know it hurts, Yukia."

"She was the first person who has ever died on me, Papa." He squeezed his eyes shut as the agony settled in. "And I didn't even try to perform an operation to save her. Kiriko wouldn't let me."

"She was too far gone at that point, son."

"She was getting herself together… she was…" he shook his head and his eyes rolled up to the sky. "I'll never understand it, Papa. I'll never understand why good people should have to die so young, and how when things go perfect they can go wrong so fast, without any warning."

"The man she was with was a bad man. Be grateful that he died," Black Jack responded. "At least the world didn't have to put up with him."

Yukia's face scrunched in disgust at the memory of Taro. That ugly, selfish, abusive brute. His fingers curled up into fists.

"Yukia, let me tell you a story about when I was young. It's about my first love." He exhaled and the water droplets in the air clouded together in a mist.

Yukia turned his head and watched his father with great interest. As usual his expressions were indifferent. Rock solid, a beacon of strength that had served their family.

"When I was in medical school, there was a girl that I knew: Megumi Kisaragi. We worked together sometimes, and we saw each other frequently. She was a pretty girl, with an intelligent mind, and though I didn't go out and say it, I respected her and I loved her.

"Kisaragi... she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of ovarian cancer. Even though I was a 'greenhorn,' and her chances of survival were slim, I demanded to perform the operation. Before she was about to go under, I kissed her and confessed what my feelings were to her. I operated on her and it was a success, but… she went away to do her own thing." He shrugged his shoulders. "Become a doctor on a boat. Travel the world to try to outrun her past." He cast a look out towards the world. "And I was hurt after that. She was my first love. I felt like she had died."

"But she still lived…"

"What I'm trying to say, Yukia, if you were paying attention… is that I'm glad that I told her how I felt before it was too late. That I at least had that chance to let her know that somebody cared about her. That I could let myself know that I cared about her. Love is complicated, but in a case like me and Kisaragi's, you take what you can get. And I got what fate determined for us."

Yukia lowered his head and they continued along in silence. He could feel his shoes beginning to dampen with water.

"There have been a few other women besides her. None like her though… none until your mother. Do you remember the incident that occurred when you were little?"

"When the house blew up, you disappeared, and I met Kiriko?" Yukia snorted sarcastically. "No Papa, I don't think I'd remember something that major."

Black Jack rolled his eyes. "Anyways… when that happened, I remember lying in bed the night that it had happened and thinking, _So this is what pain feels like. This is what it's like to lose someone you love. _Admittedly, it was so much worse than when I had lost my mother. Nothing could compare to losing Pinoko and any one of our family. Nothing." He closed his eyes. "I realized a long time ago, that I had outgrown living in the tragedy of what used to be Kisaragi and I… I had been stolen away by your mother."

He clapped a hand on his son's shoulder. "And though this hurts, Yukia… you will one day outgrow the pain too. But you won't forget her."

Yukia smiled then, satisfied with what his father had said. His dad wasn't much for important, heartfelt words, but he had known from when he was little that seeing his family every day would light up his world. He remembered the days when after operations and time spent from home, how he would bring them each a little gift, no matter how small or insignificant. After particularly long trips, he would throw open his arms and catch the rambunctious little girls in a hug as they stampeded towards him.

One day, Yukia would not be as pained by losing Ruri. And he would meet someone that would light up his life, even brighter than she had.


	16. Epilogue

_We have come to the epilogue! *does a little dance* Here's my big thank you to everyone who took the time to read this story, and here's an even bigger thank you to those that took the time to read the entire trilogy. It's been one crazy ride, you guys. And fun because the readers made it fun. :-) So concludes my Black Jack series. Enjoy! R&R please. _

The trees were beginning to color and shrug the leaves off of their many wooden shoulders onto the streets. Against the traffic of the busy fall day, an awkward, peaceful minded boy kept to himself as he strolled down the road towards school.

"Yukia!" he heard Katsu bellow out behind him. "You douche!"

He heard Katsu screech to a stop beside him and the grouching of some passerby that he had run into. Katsu, now off of his bike, pulled it up alongside Yukia.

"You were taking forever. We're going to be late to class," Yukia answered, rolling his eyes.

"Fine. I guess you don't want your payment, then."

"Gimme!" Yukia's hand felt the warm paper parcel slap the palm of his hand, and he stashed it in the front of his book bag.

"Did you get your research done for the paper?" Yukia fumbled with the thing as he tried to stop the Velcro from sticking to his arm.

Katsu shook his head and snagged Yukia; pulled him off to the side out of the way of other people so that he could stop interrupting their way. Yukia secured the parcel in his bag.

"I got my sources down and everything," Katsu crowed proudly, crossing his muscular arms in front of him. "I'm in no danger of being removed from the track team this year. Not after the magical words I scribed on this paper."

"'Scribed?' Wow, dude, that's a big word for you isn't it?" Yukia teased, snickering.

Katsu elbowed him in the ribs and though Yukia yelped in pain he ignored it. The two had fallen into their friendship quite easily, and had also gotten used to each other's antics. Some people had commented that the two balanced and complimented each other quite well, which Yukia had found that they did, though Katsu might have claimed to be the better half.

"Says you, overachiever," Katsu finally tossed back at him, smugly sliding down the walkway.

"Nothin' wrong with being smart."

"Nothin' wrong with being awesome either," Katsu grinned at him. Yukia smiled back.

Suddenly a scream rose up from somewhere ahead of them, and a crowd of people had cleared away to survey the situation. Yukia and Katsu looked at each other, then silently rushed forward and pushed their way through the crowd. A young woman stood hovering over her son, whose skull looked to be fractured judging from the size of the huge clot of blood in his hair. A biker and its rider laid off to the side, the perpetrators of the crime.

"My son!" she was wailing. "Oh my God, somebody call an ambulance!"

People began rushing around and dialing phones. Yukia and Katsu watched with wide eyes.

"Is anybody here a doctor!?" the woman then demanded again tearfully.

Katsu shoved Yukia forward. "He is!"

Yukia glanced back over his shoulder and cast an irritated look at his friend, who only gave him the thumbs up. He sighed, shook his head, and directed his attention to the woman. He shoveled his hands in the pockets of his school-issued pants and locked eyes with hers.

"I'll help you only if you agree to my price."

_The End_


End file.
